“Why do women invariably demand an answer? Some problems have none.”
The process of selecting our meal took his mind off Eva, and I
sat wondering if he would come back to it. He did, with an evident
determination to polish it off for all time. “All I can tell you is:
keep your eyes open. Your ears will be filled by your friends. Not long
ago, Eva said to me, ‘Can’t you see that his attitude does something
to me? I’m not by nature a shrew.’ ‘Who knows?’ I asked her. Have you
ever noticed that if you speak personally to her she is startled? I’m
no chemist. In the course of my education, I detested chemistry. But I
happen to think of it: doesn’t marriage start combinations bubbling in
a retort? Correct me if my terms aren’t scientific. Fellows who find
out all sorts of things about the stars in connection with our souls,
not to mention our intestines, make me faintly sick. Well, then, my
dear Dinah, it’s conceivable that Eva’s mother-in-law might be heated
in a test tube and never bubble into a poison. See what I mean?”
I admitted that I did not see. “Do you mean that Eva has bubbled into a
poisonous person? Because I don’t believe it.”
He studied me, his eyes abstractedly without, on their part, the poison
of human emotion. “Why don’t you ask her husband?”
“You are against it, then!”
He dropped into my turmoil “Why discuss this?”