“Don’t know what you mean exactly. I had to divorce Cor—my wife and I’d rather not talk about it.”
Olive felt alarmed. She said, “I’m supposed to tutor you in art and ethics and I’m merely trying to get your point of view, you know? Don’t look so shocked.”
“I don’t see what my gettin’ divorced has to do with art and ethics.... Oh, was this man Leighton a better painter’n Whistler?”
His questions ranged from the salary of canons to professional cricket. He wore a small and single pearl in his shirt at dinner, sat eating chastely and stared at Olive between the candles that made his grey eyes black in the brown of his face. The parlour-maid brought him the silver bowl of chutney three unnecessary times. He timidly corrected Olive’s views on farm labour in the United States with, “I’m afraid you’re wrong. I was brought up on a farm.”
“Really? I was wondering.”
“Fayettesville. It’s up in the woods behind Trenton. Say, what’s the Primrose League?”
For a week Olive tried to outline this mentality. He plunged from subject to subject. Economics wearied him. “What’s it matter what kind of a gover’ment you have so long as folks get enough to eat and the kids ain’t—don’t have to work?” Religion, he said, was all poppycock. His “papa” admired Robert Ingersoll and “What’s it matter whether folks have souls or not?”
“You’re a materialist,” she laughed.
“Well, what of it?”
“I’m trying to find out what your ethical standards are. Why don’t you cheat at poker?”