“You mean you won't help me, then?” Charity sighed, rising with a forlorn sense of friendlessness.
McNiven growled: “Sit down! Of course I'll help you, but I don't intend to let you drag me into ruin, and I won't help you get a divorce that would be disallowed at the first peep of light.”
“What can I do then? Peter said it could be managed quickly and quietly.”
“There are ways and ways, Charity Coe. The great curse of divorce is the awful word 'collusion.' It can be avoided as other curses can with a little attention to the language. Remember the old song, 'It's not so much the thing you say, as the nasty way you say it.' That hound of a husband of yours wants to protect that creature he has been flaunting before the world. So he offers to arrange to be caught in a trap with another woman, and make you a present of the evidence. Isn't that so?”
“I believe it is.”
“Now the law says that 'any understanding preceding the act of adultery' is collusion; it involves the committing of a crime. It would be appalling for a nice little body like you to connive at such a thing, wouldn't it?”
Charity turned pale. “I hadn't realized just what it meant.”
“I thought not,” said McNiven.
“He'll have to give me evidence of—of something that has already happened, then, won't he?”
“The law calls that collusion also.”