“Yes.”
His voice was steady and confident.
“That need not trouble you. Neither the physical nor the spiritual part of me owes anything to my wife. We are just two strangers who happen to be tied together by a convention. I am speaking neither ironically nor with cynicism. They are just simple facts. I don’t know why we married. I often marvel at what I must have been then. Now I am nothing to her, nor she to me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. Her interests are all outside my life, mine outside hers. We happen to reside in the same house, and meet at table. We do not quarrel, because we are too indifferent to quarrel. You are taking nothing that she would miss.”
“And yet!”
“Is it the secrecy?”
“In a way.”
“Well, I am going to tell her. I had decided on that.”
She turned to him in astonishment.