“If I give her the chance of divorcing me,” I said, “I’m not accountable for anything she does after that.”
There was a long silence. Then O’Rane asked:
“What will you do?”
I had not thought; but, in that moment, I had a vision of the blue water, the close-packed green woods and the vivid fuchsia hedges of Lake House.
“Go back to Ireland, I expect.”
I was making enough clatter with plates and knives to convince the least attentive that my patience was exhausted; but O’Rane lay with his hands clasped behind his head, frowning a little at his own thoughts and wholly unmoved by my demonstration.
“Will divorce make for Barbara’s happiness?,” he asked in a maddening drawl. “You can’t quite wash your hands of a woman you’ve married. You weren’t content, you see, with somebody of your own mould. Your wife had to be brilliant, beautiful, romantic, tragic. . . . You married Babs when you knew she’d been shaken to the depths of her soul by Jack Waring, when she’d been broken to the bottom of her heart by Eric Lane.”
“I thought she’d had so much romance and tragedy that she’d be glad to settle down quietly.”
“When she wasn’t in love with you? Has any one settled down quietly after gambling with death for nearly five years?”
“I’d have forgiven anything if she’d told me!,” I cried, as we went back.