“No,” she said, “Colin was very clear on that. He went out to Nevada and got it on mental cruelty. They had made an agreement by which he was to give her money, and it terminated when she married. He didn’t want to talk about why he wanted a divorce or was willing to pay her to get it, and I had sufficient reasons of my own, I thought, not to question him too closely. He wanted to be fair to her in what he told me. He didn’t want me to regard her as a hateful person when he didn’t regard her that way himself. Very rarely some little bitterness would come out, but he was always desperately ashamed of that. It was no act; he had no reason to act with me. He held himself responsible for a share of the failure of that marriage, and there was an astonishment he showed over things I would do or say. Those things would be perfectly normal, in terms of what I’ve been led to understand about normality—and I have been led to an understanding, believe me. What I mean to say is, there were things that he should have gotten from his marriage with Betty Ford that he simply didn’t get, and he couldn’t help showing it when he got them from me. It was as if he had given up hope of ever getting them. They were simple things, gifts of love, mostly. We had success, and the success seemed, among other things, to revive an opinion that he had held about her and had forgotten in the process of giving up his hope—that she, for whatever else could be said about her, was unstable. I’m not the one who should talk, I know, but that was the impression I received—”