So Well Remembered Read Online Free PDF Page A

friends or my
country… But infatuation’s different—it seems to glory in doing
things IN SPITE OF, rather than BECAUSE OF… if you know what I mean.”
    George made no comment.
    “Well, anyhow, the point is, he hasn’t dropped her, even though he knows
the truth and she’s been forced to admit it. He’s behaving, in fact, as if he
CAN’T drop her. The last time I talked to him, which was from Paris, I
gathered he’d not only forgiven her for the deception, but she’s made him
believe a long story about an unhappy past and a husband she ran away from
because she couldn’t stand him… and the upshot of it all is, Jeff’s now
urging her to get a divorce so that he can marry her himself.”
    “What’s HER attitude?”
    “I only know through him—and of course he’s so completely prejudiced
in her favour that it’s not much to go by. But remember he’s quite a catch,
even if it does ruin his career.”
    “And it would? Because of the scandal?”
    “Possibly… But worst of all, as I see it, is the thing itself—to
put himself at the mercy of someone who has such evident power to distort and
overthrow his judgment… JUDGMENT… the most valuable attribute a man of
his profession can have… because if he still had any of it left, he’d drop
her. After all, how could he EXPECT a marriage of that sort to turn out a
success?… It’s a sad thing, Boswell, to see a first-class intelligence
functioning like a baby’s.”
    “Why don’t you go out and talk to him personally as soon as you have the
time?”
    “Yes, I shall do that—I wired him today about it. But somehow I’m
not sure that I can do much on my own—that last telephone talk was
simply shattering—the most I could get was a promise that he’d think it
over, but he CAN’T think, that’s the trouble—he’s in a world utterly
beyond logic and argument—you can’t prove anything to him —he
just believes this woman’s a sort of martyr-heroine and her husband’s an
impossible brute and—”
    “How do you know he isn’t?”
    Winslow got up suddenly, walked to the window, then came back and touched
George on the shoulder with a queerly intimate gesture. “I didn’t know
—definitely—until today. But I’m a bit positive at this
moment…” And after a second pause, standing in front of George, he
stammered unsurely: “I hope I haven’t been so damned tactful that you’re
going to ask me what all this has got to do with you…”
* * * * *
    Then George looked up and saw in a flash what it HAD got to
do with
him.
    He felt himself growing cold and sick, as if a fist were grasping him by
his insides. Try as one might, he reflected with queer and instant
detachment, the actual blow of such a revelation must be sudden; there was no
way of leading up that could disperse the shock over a period; one second one
did not know, the next second one did know; that was all there was to it, so
that all Winslow’s delicacy had been in a sense wasted. He might just as well
have blurted out the truth right at the beginning.
    George knew he must say something to acknowledge that Oxford had managed
to convey with subtlety in an hour what Browdley could have tackled vulgarly
in five minutes. After a long pause, he therefore spoke the slow Browdley
affirmative that, by its tone, could imply resignation as well as
affirmation.
    “You mean you DO understand, Boswell?”
    “Aye,” George repeated.
    “I’m terribly sorry—I could think of no other way than to put it to
you—”
    “Of course, man, of course.”
    Winslow gripped George’s arm speechlessly, and for several minutes the two
seemed not to know what to say to each other. Presently George mumbled: “Is
that—all—you can tell me—about it? No more details of any
kind? Not that they’d help much, but still—”
    “Honestly, Boswell, I’ve told you just about everything I know
myself.”
    “I understand… But how about the people on