“Good heavens,” said Samuel fretfully, “why was I born in such a cryptic age?”
“The truth is—I spoke in a futurist sense when I called her my wife.”
“In other words, you lied,” suggested Samuel. “You just took a little tame woman on a string for a trip, as many better men have done before you?”
“I dragged a woman by force across the Atlantic, and then she ran away. She ran back home.”
“The silly ass,” said Mr. Rust irritably. “Why did she do that?”
“The attitude of women towards force ...” said the gardener sententiously, “is not what psychologists make it out to be. By some of the books I’ve read, I would have thought that women worshipped brute force; I would have thought that they kept their hair long specially in order to be dragged about by it.”
“I have known very few women really well,” said Samuel; “and the ones I knew didn’t wear hair that they could be dragged about by. I should think the final disappearance of your post-impressionist wife was rather a good riddance.”
“It was neither good nor a riddance. In the same futurist sense I still call her my wife. It’s an effort, I admit, to continue to be fond of a militant suffragette, and yet somehow it’s an effort I can’t help making.”
Courtesy appeared, her hair an impudent rival to the sunset.
“I’ve brought your book from the library,” she said. “I couldn’t get any books by Somethingevsky, as you asked, so I brought The Rosary.