'I do,' I said.
He half winced.
'Then why—why the devil did she marry the poor chap?'
There was an odd sort of appeal in his voice; appeal against the cruelty of fate, perhaps, or the perverseness of Jane.
I told him what I thought, as clearly as I could.
'She got carried away by the excitement of her life in Paris, and he was all mixed up with that. I think she felt she would, in a way, be carrying on the excitement and the life if she married him. And she was knocked over by his beauty. Then, when the haze and glamour had cleared away, and she was left face to face with him as a life companion, she found she couldn't do with him after all. He bored her and annoyed her more and more. I don't know how long she could have gone on with it; she never said anything, to me about it. But, now this has happened, what might have become a great difficulty is solved.'
'Solved,' he repeated, in a curious, dead voice, staring at the floor. 'I suppose it is.'
He was silent for quite five minutes, sitting quite still, with his black eyes absent and vacant, as if he were very tired. I knew he was trying to think out some problem, and I supposed I knew what it was. But I couldn't account then for his extreme unhappiness.
At last he said, 'Katherine. This is a mess. I can't tell you about it, but it is a mess. Jane and I are in a mess…. Oh, you've guessed, haven't you, about Jane and me? Juke guessed.'
'Yes. I guessed that before Jukie did. Before you did, as a matter of fact.'