“You call that rot about furriners ‘intelligent conversation’?  Well, all I can say is that it’s like you—­all pretence.  One ud think you’d just come back from a pleasure-trip abroad instead of from a wicked life that you should ought to be ashamed of.”

For the first time a flush darkened the heavy whiteness of Ellen’s skin.

“So you want to rake up the past?  It’s exactly like you, Jo—­’having things out,’ I suppose you’d call it.  How many times in our lives have you and I ’had things out’?—­And what good has it ever done us?”

“I can’t go on all pretending like this—­I can’t go on pretending I think you an honest woman when I don’t—­I can’t go on saying ’It’s a fine day’ when I’m wondering how you’ll fare in the Day of Judgment.”

“Poor old Jo,” said Ellen, “you’d have had an easier life if you hadn’t lived, as they say, so close to nature.  It’s just what you call pretences and others call good manners that make life bearable for some people.”

“Yes, for ‘some people’ I daresay—­people whose characters won’t stand any straight talking.”

“Straight talking is always so rude—­no one ever seems to require it on pleasant occasions.”

“That’s all nonsense.  You always was a squeamish, obstropulous little thing, Ellen.  It’s only natural that having you back in my house—­as I’m more than glad to do—­I should want to know how you stand.  What made you come to me sudden like that?”

“Can’t you guess?  It’s rather unpleasant for me to have to tell you.”

“Reckon it was that man”—­somehow Sir Harry’s name had become vaguely improper, Joanna felt unable to pronounce it—­“then you’ve made up your mind not to marry him,” she finished.

“How can I marry him, seeing I’m somebody else’s wife?”

“I’m glad to hear you say such a proper thing.  It ain’t what you was saying at the start.  Then you wanted a divorce and all sorts of foreign notions ... what’s made you change round?”

“Well, Arthur wouldn’t give me a divorce, for one thing.  For another, as I told you in my letter, one often doesn’t know people till one’s lived with them—­besides, he’s too old for me.”

“He’ll never see sixty again.”

“He will,” said Ellen indignantly—­“he was only fifty-five in March.”

“That’s thirty year more’n you.”

“I’ve told you he’s too old for me.”

“You might have found out that at the start—­he was only six months younger then.”

“There’s a great many things I might have done at the start,” said Ellen bitterly—­“but I tell you, Joanna, life isn’t quite the simple thing you imagine.  There was I, married to a man utterly uncongenial—­”

“He wasn’t!  You’re not to miscall Arthur—­he’s the best man alive.”

“I don’t deny it—­perhaps that is why I found him uncongenial.  Anyhow, we were quite unsuited to each other—­we hadn’t an idea in common.”