Now give me your real advice---your sincere, friendly
advice: you know I have always trusted your judgment. I promise you the
children will be quiet.
McCOMAS (resigning himself). Well, well! What I want to say is
this. In the old arrangement with your husband, Mrs. Clandon, you had
him at a terrible disadvantage.
MRS. CLANDON. How so, pray?
McCOMAS. Well, you were an advanced woman, accustomed to defy public
opinion, and with no regard for what the world might say of you.
MRS. CLANDON (proud of it). Yes: that is true. (Gloria, behind the
chair, stoops and kisses her mother's hair, a demonstration which
disconcerts her extremely.)
McCOMAS. On the other hand, Mrs. Clandon, your husband had a great
horror of anything getting into the papers. There was his business to
be considered, as well as the prejudices of an old-fashioned family.
MRS. CLANDON. Not to mention his own prejudices.
McCOMAS. Now no doubt he behaved badly, Mrs. Clandon---
MRS. CLANDON (scornfully). No doubt.
McCOMAS. But was it altogether his fault?
MRS. CLANDON. Was it mine?
McCOMAS (hastily). No. Of course not.
GLORIA (observing him attentively). You do not mean that, Mr.
McComas.
McCOMAS. My dear young lady, you pick me up very sharply. But let
me just put this to you. When a man makes an unsuitable marriage
(nobody's fault, you know, but purely accidental incompatibility of
tastes); when he is deprived by that misfortune of the domestic sympathy
which, I take it, is what a man marries for; when in short, his wife is
rather worse than no wife at all (through no fault of his own, of
course), is it to be wondered at if he makes matters worse at first by
blaming her, and even, in his desperation, by occasionally drinking
himself into a violent condition or seeking sympathy elsewhere?
MRS.
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