Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
forward. I had to tell her how things really were. . . We should all be poorer than we are by a divorce. . . Though she clearly did not believe me, she was impressed; she was thinking. In that class one doesn’t think very much, apparently. I gathered that she could not go back to the stage; she had no position there and could only hope for work in the chorus. . .
“Old Boy says it will be all right,” she said, and I could see that she was exhausted by the rare exertion of thinking. Until you have heard your husband described as “Old Boy” by a half-naked chorus-girl who is slowly bleeding him to death, you have not realized how highly your self-restraint may be tested. . .
“I don’t suggest more than that it will be an effort,” I said. “My dear young lady, I speak with some knowledge. You were married for a few months to a husband whom you hardly saw and who spent what money he had like water. I have kept house for more than thirty years on an income which you would not think large, but which is bigger than anything you can hope for. I know something of men and their ways and their extravagances and humours. It will be a great change, and I only hope that you will prove equal to it.” I pointed—not unkindly—at the litter in her room. “I trust for your
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