It had been a strange and cruel feature of it that her tea roses were more humanly pitying than she; for they had given out to him a breath of home. “And don’t you think, Dinah, that sometimes a merciful lie is the act of a compassionate God?” He did not say what he had wished her to lie about. Each minute had been as long as a man’s life. There had been a drag in time itself that dulled the nerves. For she was so clear and direct, when she made her wishes plain, that she might not have realized it was her husband to whom she made such a proposal. He had asked what she wished him to do, and she had said “Nothing. What on earth should I wish you to do?” However, it had seemed not to impress him, that she thus sacrificed his future freedom while claiming her own: there was something more dreadful on his mind. Telling me of it--and not telling me the black thing in his mind--he paced the length of my room, his head bent and his gaze on the floor. He could not, for a while, rouse himself from a creeping paralysis of the senses. He must have so paced when he cautioned himself to have patience with her. He had said to her--speaking with great self-control, he assured me: “I acknowledge I don’t see what you mean. You’re usually inconsistent; but this time you’ve gone beyond the reasoning faculties of a mere man.” He said that he listened to his own voice, and that it had not revealed his rising fury. And then he was aware that his voice had flattened, and that he was assuring her that she should have her divorce. “Only make it as quiet as possible, on account of my mother.” She had stared at him, he reported; he had noticed that her eyes had blared wide open. “Can’t you understand,” she had demanded impatiently, “that I don’t want a divorce? That I don’t need a divorce? Why should I want a divorce, when God knows I’ve had enough of marriage?” She had immediately changed to softness, and had added: “I think we could be friends. We’d be so much better friends if we were separated.”