e like that."

"Then we can't very well go on living together," she said. "Can we?"

"Very well," I deliberated "if you must have it so."

"Well, can we?"

"Can you stay in this house? I mean--if I go away?"

"I don't know.... I don't think I could."

"Then--what do you want?"

Slowly we worked our way from point to point, until at last the word
"divorce" was before us.

"If we can't live together we ought to be free," said Marion.

"I don't know anything of divorce," I said--"if you mean that. I don't
know how it is done. I shall have to ask somebody--or look it up....
Perhaps, after all, it is the thing to do. We may as well face it."

We began to talk ourselves into a realisation of what our divergent
futures might be. I came back on the evening of that day with my
questions answered by a solicitor.

"We can't as a matter of fact," I said, "get divorced as things are.
Apparently, so far as the law goes you've got to stand this sort of
thing. It's silly but that is the law. However, it's easy to arrange a
divorce. In addition to adultery there must be desertion or cruelty.
To establish cruelty I should have to strike you, or something of that
sort, before witnesses. That's impossible--but it's simple to desert you
legally. I have to go away from you; that's all. I can go on sending you
money--and you bring a suit, what is it?--for Restitution of Conjugal
Rights. The Court orders me to return. I disobey. Then you can go on to
divorce me. You get a Decree Nisi, and once more the Court tries to make
me come back. If we don't make it up within six months and if you don't
behave scandalously the Decree is made absolute. That's the end of the
fuss. That's how one gets unmarried. It's easier, you see, to marry than
unmarry."

"And then--how do I live? What becomes of me?"

"You'll have an income. They call it alimony. From a third to a half of
my present income--more if you like--I don't mind--three hundred a year,
say. You've got your old people to keep and you'll need all that."

"And then--then you'll be free?"

"Both of us."

"And all this life you've hated"

I looked up at her wrung and bitter face. "I haven't hated it," I lied,
my voice near breaking with the pain of it all. "Have you?"

IX

The perplexing thing about life is the irresolvable complexity of
reality, of things and relations alike. Nothing is simple. Every wrong
done has a certain justice in it, and every good deed has dregs of evi