Page:Twilight Sleep (Grosset).pdf/238

RV 230 "Separations are idiotic. What I want is a hundred per cent New York divorce. And he could let me have it just as easily"

"Lita! You don't know how wretched it makes me to hear you say such things."

"Does it? Sorry! But it's Jim's own fault. Heaps of other girls would jump at him if he was free. And if I'm bored, what's the use of trying to keep me? What on earth can we do about it, either of us? You can't take out an insurance against boredom."

"But why should you be bored? With everything on earth" Pauline waved a hand at the circumjacent luxuries.

"Well; that's it, I suppose. Always the same old everything!"

The mother-in-law softened her voice to murmur temptingly: "Of course, if it's this house you're tired of Nona told me something about your wanting to redecorate some of the rooms; and I can understand, for instance, that this one"

"Oh, this is the only one I don't utterly loathe. But I'm not divorcing Jim on account of the house," Lita answered, with a faint smile which seemed perverse to Pauline.

"Then what is the reason? I don't understand."

"I'm not much good at reasons. I want a new deal, that's all."

Pauline struggled against her rising indignation. To sit and hear this chit of a Cliffe girl speak of