“What else do you suggest?” said Hilda. “If your name appears, you will get no divorce from your wife, who is apparently quite an impossible person to be mixed up with.”

“All that!” he said grimly.

There was a long silence.

“We could go right away,” he said.

“There is no right away for Connie,” said Hilda. “Clifford is too well known.”

Again the silence of pure frustration.

“The world is what it is. If you want to live together without being persecuted, you will have to marry. To marry, you both have to be divorced. So how are you both going about it?”

He was silent for a long time.