The Belfry by May Sinclair — Read

At this period, and even now when I go back to it, I am completely / puzzled by Jevons. Here was a man who professed to understand his wife, / to know what she was feeling and thinking in every moment of her / existence; he would tell you that a man was a fool if he couldn't get the / woman he wanted; and yet, having got her, he didn't seem to know in the / most elementary way how to keep her. He didn't seem to care. He adored / her, and yet he didn't seem to care. I believe he knew that she was / leaving him, that she had left him; and yet, here he was, treating her / departure as if it didn't matter, as if it were the most natural and / reasonable thing in the world, and lashing himself into a fury about his / wretched motor-car. And he was treating the dangerous element in the / case, Charlie Thesiger, as if it didn't matter either; as if it didn't / exist. He must have known we'd taken his car out to bring his wife / back -- he knew we wouldn't have touched the beastly thing for anything / short of saving her life or his honour; and yet he had flown into a / passion and sworn at his chauffeur because we'd taken it. He adored his / wife and yet he behaved as if she were of no importance compared with the / god he'd made of his motor-car.

All that evening, I remember, he was absorbed in the solitary problem of / how he could save his god from further outrages. He settled it towards / midnight by saying that he'd buy another car that we could do what we / damn-pleased with -- a car that wouldn't matter -- that you could take out in / all weathers.