"With great respect, I don't think anyone could have persuaded her," I said. "She started with a preposterous but sincere belief that her husband was unfaithful to her, their life was fantastically impossible, both had strong wills, O'Rane was culpably trustful and Grayle was a man who had been uniformly successful, as it is called, with women. You had all the ingredients of disaster there, though it's always a big thing for a woman to compound them. Once she'd done it, there was no recalling her. I've seen her twice since, Lady Dainton; no power on earth would have sent her back to her husband, even if she'd wanted to go."
She finished her meal in silence, only shrugging her shoulders gently as if to suggest that, however wrong I might be, there was no profit in discussing the past. Dainton kept asking me what I thought O'Rane would do and what we must insist on his doing; I retaliated each time by asking him whether he wanted a divorce or not; and there was never any answer.
I had warned O'Rane that I was coming, but he stiffened perceptibly when the Daintons came in with me. In a moment, however, he was calm, dispassionate and lifeless as I had always found him since the estrangement began. And then for the third time, with the knowledge that our nerves were raw and quivering, I had to tell him of my visit to Milford Square and my meeting with Bannerman and Grayle. We talked as if we were solicitors attending a consultation with counsel, treating O'Rane, and O'Rane treating himself, as the lay client.
"I saw she wasn't coming back to me," he explained, "so I thought the kindest thing was to let her lead her new life unembarrassed by ties with me. I could have let her bring the petition, I suppose, but I rather draw the line at that. I didn't see, however much I loved her, why I should get up and lie and say I'd been disloyal to her."
The Daintons looked at me, as though they wanted me to be spokesman, and I reminded O'Rane of his offer to stay proceedings, if his wife and Grayle separated.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled mirthlessly.
"It started as blackmail, I'm afraid. Afterwards I did want to spare her, if I could—— I hoped she'd come back to me. When she refused ..."
"I was telling Lady Dainton," I said, "that, if you don't expect her to come back, you probably ought—in the interests of you both—to let the proceedings take their course. I know you don't like the idea of it,—we none of us do—but you wouldn't like the idea of her being tied in any way for the rest of her life. Of course, this isn't a thing that you can decide offhand, but, when you consider it, there's one factor you musn't leave out, and that is Grayle."
O'Rane raised his head slowly.
"He doesn't come in now."