“Oh, quite.” Lieutenant Valcour smiled engagingly. “You often felt like killing him, but you wanted it to stop right there.”
“You know, I wish you’d come to tea sometime—” Mrs. Endicott’s eyes contracted sharply. Her voice became a definite apology, not to Lieutenant Valcour, but as though its message were being sent along obscure and private channels to some port where it would find her husband. “There are moments,” she said, “when you make me forget.”
“Forgetting isn’t a sin. That’s natural. It’s not loving—being mentally hurtful—that’s a sin. There isn’t any word exactly for what I mean. Did you both stay in the attic and go through the trunk together, or whatever it was you were going through?”
Mrs. Endicott smiled as if at some secret knowledge. “I wasn’t going through a trunk,” she said.
“No? I just mentioned it, as nine times out of ten that’s what people do in attics.”
“And the tenth customary thing,” said Mrs. Endicott, reaching for a cigarette, “is suicide.”