“How could I?” she cried. “How can you ask? That is what makes it so hard, that I cannot be with them now. But I should only have made them still more unhappy, if I had gone. They would not have understood—they cannot understand who have every reason to believe in marriage, why those to whom it has been a mockery and a torture should be driven to divorce.”
“Why divorce?” he said.
“Do you mean—do you mean that you wish me to give you the reasons why I felt justified in leaving my husband?”
“Not unless you care to,” he replied. “I have no right to demand them. I only ask you to remember, Honora, that you have not explained these reasons very clearly in your letters to your aunt and uncle. They do not understand them. Your uncle was unable, on many accounts, to come here; and he thought that—that as an old friend, you might be willing to talk to me.”
“I can't live with—with my husband,” she cried. “I don't love him, and he doesn't love me. He doesn't know what love is.”
Peter Erwin glanced at her, but she was too absorbed then to see the thing in his eyes. He made no comment.
“We haven't the same tastes, nor—nor the same way of looking at things—the same views about making money—for instance. We became absolute strangers. What more is there to say?” she added, a little defiantly.
“Your husband committed no—flagrant offence against you?” he inquired.
“That would have made him human, at least,” she cried. “It would have proved that he could feel—something. No, all he cares for in the world is to make money, and he doesn't care how he makes it. No woman with an atom of soul can live with a man like that.”
If Peter Erwin deemed this statement a trifle revolutionary, he did not say so.