To tell _me_. . . . I asked you to give him a chance of
helping you out of your troubles, but I'd rather you gave _me_ the
chance. . . . You see, John would be very unhappy if he knew that I knew
this; and he would have to tell me, because when a man has been
happily married to anybody for twenty-eight years, he can't really
keep a secret from the other one. He pretends to himself that he can,
but he knows all the time what a miserable pretence it is. And so John
would tell me, and say he was sorry, and I would say: "It's all right,
darling, I knew," but it would make him ashamed, and he would be
afraid that perhaps I wasn't thinking him such a wonderful man as I
did before. And it's very bad for a public man like John when he
begins to lose faith in what his wife is thinking about him. . . . So let
_me_ be your friend, will you? (There is a silence between them for a
little. He looks at her wonderingly. Suddenly she stands up, her
finger to her lips) H'sh! It's John. (She moves away from him)
(SIR JOHN PEMBURY comes in quickly; big, good-looking, decisive,
friendly; a man who wears very naturally, and without any
self-consciousness, an air of being somebody.)
PEMBURY (walking hastily past his wife to her writing-desk).
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