Jem: Why not?
Sir W.: Oh, no! Of course! Why not, as you say?
Jem: Yet if I begin to discuss it all with her, she begins to yawn; and her yawning drives me nearly mad, when I am talking on a matter of vital interest.
Sir W.: Dear! Dear! I begin to find all this more serious than I thought. For it does seem to me as if you differed on most subjects.
Jem (moodily): So we do.
Sir W.: Ah! I am afraid it may be pretty serious! And after listening to all your story I can't help feeling, my dear fellow, that there is not the chance of things bettering themselves, as I had hoped in the first instance.
Jem: You feel that?
Sir W.: I do! I do! This divergence of taste and sympathies is no laughing matter. It rather alarms me when I think that the abyss between you and your wife as time goes on may only widen. (He indicates an imaginary abyss, which Jem stares at dubiously.) Yes! widen—and widen!
Jem (after a moment's pause of half surprise, half pain): What you say is not consoling.
Sir W.: At first I thought differently; but now I hesitate to mislead you, and I admit my heart sinks when I think of your future, after hearing all you have to say. Indeed, I hope I may be mistaken. I have, as you know, but little experience in these matters. Your aunt and I have lived in undisturbed harmony these fifteen years. Never has an angry word been heard within our walls.