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.
“How are you going about it for us?” he said.
“We will see if Duncan will consent to figure as corespondent: then we must get Clifford to divorce Connie: and you must go on with your divorce, and you must both keep apart till you are free.”
“Sounds like a lunatic asylum.”
“Possibly! And the world would look on you as lunatics: or worse.”
“What is worse?”
“Criminals, I suppose.”
“Hope I can plunge in the dagger a few more times yet,” he said grinning. Then he was silent, and angry.
“Well!” he said at last. “I agree to anything. The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I’ll do my best. But you’re right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.”
He looked in humiliation, anger, weariness and misery at Connie.
“Ma lass!” he said. “The world’s goin’ to put salt on thy tail.”
“Not if we don’t let it,” she said.
She minded this conniving against the world less than he did.