Men and Wives by Ivy Compton-Burnett

harsh but just description,” said Camilla.
    â€œWell, quotation, description, analysis, anything is grist to my mill,” said her mother, “provided it can take on literary clothing. That is my only stipulation.”
    â€œShe is qualified to listen to you, then, Ernest,” said Camilla, glancing at her husband’s posture as at a time-worn torment. “You need someone with a catholic spirit. Tell her you are going to put it all on to me, if you are not ashamed of it in plain English. That is good enough literary clothing, and she can understand it, though she cannot speak it.”
    â€œIndeed it is good enough literary clothing!” said Mrs. Christy. “My English is of the plainest. A few good words, a few expressions sanctified by long usage, welded easily into a cultivated whole!” She bethought herself to make a disclaiming gesture. “That should be the common standard in speech.”
    â€œMrs. Christy, let us look at things,” said Bellamy. “We have turned our eyes from them long enough, too long.”
    â€œYes, well, people always find me such a help in setting matters on to their right basis. I put myself entirely into the place of the individual, and yet shed the light of my own view-point on the assembled facts, which is such an illuminating thing to do.”
    â€œMother, do keep your hands still. You remind me of Miss Dabis. Ernest feels he has enough light in himself. It is his profession to let it shine before men.”
    â€œCamilla understands me. I am going to act according to that light. I am not a man to judge sternly a fellow-creature fallen by weakness, to learn no compassion from my own lack of strength. But on that very ground, neither am I a man who does not need support. God knows how I have craved for sympathy and been denied, how slow I have been in giving up faith and hope.”
    â€œErnest, no one is asking you to hope for my sympathy,” said Camilla, as though her impatience just allowed her to speak. “You know quite well that I am not able to give sympathy to you, that you don’t command my sympathy. I am not imploring you to settle down with me again. The thought of it would be the end of us both. It is for that very reason that there is only one part for a man to play.”
    â€œYou are asking me to give up my future and my hopes, when you have given me nothing. I am to consider you because you are a woman, to this extent. My feeling for women forbids me to sully the name I have a right to offer to another woman, unsullied.”
    â€œHe is as polygamous as I am, Mother, except that ‘to the pure all things are pure’. Well, Antony finds it all the same, and we can’t expect a man to have a case trumped up against himself, who has spent his life preaching at other people. Poor Ernest!” Camilla threw herself against her husband. “I ought to have taught you that preaching is a game that two can play at. It is my fault that I have to be divorced and disgraced, and bring my mother’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”
    Bellamy stood aloof and silent, proof against the challenge he had taken so many times.
    â€œWell, Mother, shall we break up the meeting? That must be Antony ringing the bell, another son coming to pay his respects to you! You will soon have quite a sizeable family if this goes on. You had better stay,. Ernest, and clasp the hand of your successor. It might be soothing to exchange a word of sympathy.”
    â€œWhy, what is the matter with you both?” said Dufferin, addressing the women and not perceiving Bellamy.
    â€œMother is weeping about my being divorced. I am the one who ought to weep, but I am showing a criminal’s courage.”
    â€œWhy, what is there to weep about? It is my responsibility.”
    â€œYou know it is not. You know you have done it all for Camilla’s sake,” said Mrs. Christy, weeping. “To think that this public