“Say no more, say no more,” interrupted his friend. “I understand it all perfectly, I tell you.”
“You misunderstand, you mean,” said Dupuis angrily. “I have never, for one moment, forgotten my wife’s good qualities, but, were she ten times the saint she is, it is not less true that I have been living the life of a snail. Good heavens! I shall be better able to appreciate her many virtues when no consciousness of intellectual degradation is present to spoil my enjoyment.”
“You are too absurd, George! You make me laugh with your ‘intellectual degradation.’”
“You did not laugh half an hour ago,” retorted Dupuis, “when you depicted it in colors ... well, in colors which not even your friendship for me could soften.”
“Is it possible that you did not perceive that I was jesting? How singular it is that there’s not an intelligent man in France who, if he is condemned to live in the provinces, far from Paris, does not fancy that he is becoming idiotic! I had a presentiment that you suffered from this monomania, and I amused myself by exciting it. I had been drinking, you know; let that be my excuse.”
“However that may be,” answered Dupuis, a cold, stubborn expression stealing over his face and fixing itself there, “I am more than ever resolved to travel; if I hesitated before, I do so no longer. I confess that I was afraid of the effect my intention would produce on my wife, but her calmness removes all my scruples.”
“Listen to me, George, I beg you,” replied his friend earnestly: “don’t trust too much to appearances; your wife affects a firmness she is far from feeling. I know....”
“You know!” interrupted Dupuis. “You know that you begin to think that I shall be in your way, and so you want to cast me over.”
“No, George, no—nothing of the kind. You don’t understand me. I sincerely believed, from what you said, that you had changed your mind. I thought that I was anticipating your wishes in giving back your promise to go with me. But if you really persist in your intentions, all right ... I am delighted.”
“Here are the horses,” bawled Marianne, opening the door suddenly and then shutting it with a bang.