Yet, in the name of God, what should I know if I
don't know the life of the hearth and of the smoking-room, since
my whole life has been passed in those places? The warm
hearthside! --Well, there was Florence: I believe that for the twelve
years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed irretrievably to
have weakened her heart--I don't believe that for one minute she
was out of my sight, except when she was safely tucked up in bed
and I should be downstairs, talking to some good fellow or other
in some lounge or smoking-room or taking my final turn with a
cigar before going to bed. I don't, you understand, blame Florence.
But how can she have known what she knew? How could she have
got to know it? To know it so fully. Heavens! There doesn't seem
to have been the actual time. It must have been when I was taking
my baths, and my Swedish exercises, being manicured. Leading
the life I did, of the sedulous, strained nurse, I had to do
something to keep myself fit. It must have been then! Yet even
that can't have been enough time to get the tremendously long
conversations full of worldly wisdom that Leonora has reported to
me since their deaths. And is it possible to imagine that during our
prescribed walks in Nauheim and the neighbourhood she found
time to carry on the protracted negotiations which she did carry on
between Edward Ashburnham and his wife? And isn't it incredible
that during all that time Edward and Leonora never spoke a word
to each other in private? What is one to think of humanity?
For I swear to you that they were the model couple.
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