According to the novelists and
playwrights, shrewd fellows who knew what was what, if you talked
to your wife about your business she said you had no soul; if you
didn't, she said you didn't think enough of her to let her share
your life. If you gave her expensive presents and an unlimited
credit account, she complained that you looked on her as a mere
doll; and if you didn't, she called you a screw. That was
marriage. If it didn't get you with the left jab, it landed on you
with the right upper-cut. None of that sort of thing for Dudley
Pickering.
'You're absolutely right,' he said, enthusiastically. 'Funny I
never looked at it that way before.'
Somebody was turning the door-handle. He hoped it was Roscoe
Sherriff. He had been rather dull the last time Sherriff had
looked in. He would be quite different now. He would be gay and
sparkling. He remembered two good stories he would like to tell
Sherriff.
The door opened and Claire came in. There was a silence. She stood
looking at him in a way that puzzled Mr Pickering. If it had not
been for her attitude at their last meeting and the manner in
which she had broken that last meeting up, he would have said that
her look seemed somehow to strike a note of appeal. There was
something soft and repentant about her.
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