“Did you? Don’t you think it was a little unnecessary? After all——”
“We are coming to the point. I have a very great affection for Eve Carfax. She and I see things together as two humans very rarely see them. We were made for the same work. She understands the colour of life as I understand it.”
Gertrude Canterton wrinkled up her forehead as though she were puzzled.
“That is very nice for you, James. It ought to be a help.”
“I want you to understand the whole matter thoroughly. I am telling you the truth, because it seems to me the sane and honest thing to do. You and I are not exactly comrades, are we? We just happen to be married. We have our own interests, our own friends. As a man, I have wanted someone who sympathised and understood. I am not making this a personal question, for I know you do not get much sympathy from me. But I have found a comrade. That is all.”
His wife sat back in her chair, staring.
“Do you mean to say that you are in love with this girl?”
“Exactly! I am in love with her.”
“James, how ridiculous!”
Perhaps laughter was the last thing that he had expected, but laugh she did with a thin merriment that had no acid edge to it. It was the laughter of an egoist who had failed utterly to grasp the significance of what he had said. She was too sexless to be jealous, too great an egoist to imagine that she was being slighted. It appealed to her as a comedy, as something quite outside herself.