Cytherea

ion for Eastlake. When Lee reached the countryside opening in the familiar hilly vistas he had, in place of the usual calm recognitions through a run of hardly more than an hour,

e owned were all absent. Had it been possible he would have cancelled the past forty-eight hours; but Lee was forced to admit to himself that he was not invaded by a very lively sense of guil

struggling to the limit of endurance against a powerful adverse current, she had turned and swept with it. The fact was that the entire situation was utterly different from the general social and moral conception of it; and Lee beg

ried and surreptitious, snatched in William Grove's house; the servants, with their penetration of the tone of an establishment, knowing and insufferable; he lived over the increasing dissatisfaction with quick embraces in the automobile, and the final indignities of lying names and rooms of pandering and filthy debasement. The almost ine

on, he had robbed her of nothing. It was a new idea to him and it required careful thought, a slow justification. It answered, perhaps, once and for all, his question about the essential oneness of marriage. Yes, that was a misconception; marriage in an ideal state he wasn't considering, b

er than his; she didn't regard herself as scarlet, but thought of the rest of the world as unendurably drab. The last thing she had said to him was that she was glad, glad, that it had happened. This, too, in Savina, had preserved them from the slightest suggestion of infe

uous need had returned. Yet, until he had gone to the Groves', his restlessness had been trivial, hardly more than academic, a half-smiling interest in a doll; but now, after he had left the realm of fancy for an overt act, a full realization of his implication was imperative. Without it he would be

ion of them reaching to impotence. No, no, no! That was never Cytherea's import. He didn't want to impoverish himself by the cheap flinging away of small coin from his ultimate store. He didn't, equally, wish to keep on exasperating Fanny in small ways. That pettiness was

e of the difficulty-what had happened concerned Savina even more than it did his wife and him. He had Savina Grove, so entirely in his hands, to guard. And the innate animosity of women toward women was incalculable.

ll trace of the latter. The result of this was that women, the prostitutes and the mothers alike, as well, had no other validity of judgment. The present marriage was hardly more than an exchange of the violation of innocence, or of acted innocence, for an adequate material consideration. If this were not

Savina's hand under his cuff; he felt her sliding, with her arms locked about his neck, out of her furs in the automobile; a white glimmer, a whisper, she materialized in the coldness of the night. There was a long-drawn wailing blast from the locomotive-they were almost entering the train-shed at Eastlake. When Fanny expe

prove the tone of his relations with Fanny, he cheerfully met the evidence of her sense of injury. "Of course," she added, "we expected you yesterday up to the very last minute." When he asked her who exactly she meant by we she answered, "The Rodmans and John and Alice Luce. It was all arranged for you. Borden Rodman sent us some ducks

f I accomplished anything with her or not." Fanny seemed to have lost all interest in Peyton Morris's affair. "I had d

itive," she corrected him; "whenever I am, you

id you take Mina Raff to dinner?" she asked; "and what did you do afterward?" He told her. "She was so tired that she went back to the Pla

you'd see a

eas about actresses, or else they have changed and the opinions have stood still. They are as business-like no

te you cal

; but she hasn't started to ca

nd I sat around. People are too selfish for anything!" Her voice grew sharper. "They stayed until after twelve, just because Borden was ninet

ner with the Groves." This was so nearly true that he advanced it

ccount of Claire, you stayed three nights, and only saw Mina Raff once." He told her briefl

irl into an opium p

e," she returned; "and it doesn'

t to Ma

micked his e

of his pedestal, but solid and cordial. Mrs. Grove is more unusual; I should say she was a difficult woman to describe. She dresses beautifully, Paris and the rest o

ldren." She had apparently heard

re all right or y

it. I'm sorry, but you will have to get into the habit of staying home at least one night a week. I attend to all I can

ded irritation; "I practically never go out without you. Unl

ves's tomorrow. It's more amusing there, I don'

s about? You're really cutting with the Groves-tw

ut on the bed, my best nightgowns and lace stockings, for the trip; then I couldn't go; and I arranged the party so carefully

ty, decided for me. I couldn't just run into the house and out again. But there is no need

g and trying to please you at every turn. I should have gone in and ordered a new dress; any other woman you know would have done that; and, I have no doubt, would have told you it was old when it wasn't. I wish I didn't show that I care so much and kept you guessing. You'd be much more interested if you weren't so sure of me.

nny, don't stop. I do the best I can. Coming out in the train I made up my mind to sto

e did nothing but fight. And that isn't true; we have never

e kiss we had when you

rceptible influence on him. He was even a little embarrassed, awkward, at her embrace; and its calmly possessive pressure filled him with a restive wish to move away. He repressed this, forced himself to hold her still, repeated silently all that she had given him; and she turned a face brilliant with color to his gaze. Fanny made him bring her stool-how sharply Savina's heels had dug into him under the table at the Lafayette-and showed him her ankles. "Y

ey for a hunt party last night," she told him; "he said he'd be back." Why, then, he almost exclaimed, he, Lee, had been successful with Mina Raff. Instead he said that she would undoubtedly be glad of that. "Oh, yes! But neither of us is very much excited about it just now; he is too much like a ball on a rubber string; and if I were a man

w. He saw it through a screen of bare wet maple branches-a dripping brown meadow lightly wreathed in blue mist, sedgy undergrowth along water and the further ranges of hills merged in shifting clouds. A shaft of su

they might have had. I am afraid that if the positions of Mina and me had been reversed I wouldn't have seen you in New York. I found that out last night when I knew Peyton wasn't going. What he said over and over was that everything could be just as it was." She laughed, riding easily, subconsciously, on the snaff

es are so dulled by your ingratitud

gs with the dye run from them. I want Peyton, yes, I love him; but what I thought would satisfy me doesn't. I want more! I am very serious about the romantic play-it is exactly what I mean. I had read about great emotions, seen them since I was a child at the opera,

he same fix, Cla

ith Fanny is the most perfect for miles around. Fanny is

n't seen any of this romantic

ouldn't let it sp

pig

ut a woman shrivelled and blasted and twisted out of her purpose-they either look as though they had been steeped in vinegar or filled with tallow-is simply obscene. Before it is too harrowing, and in their best dresses and flowers, they ought to step into a ball-room of ch

lly. She has splendid qualities almost never found together in one person. She is, well, I suppose careful is the word, and, at the same time,

ed her horse, without warning, through a break in the fence; and, putting him at a smart run, jumped a stream with a high insecure bank beyond, and went with a poun

trotting back; "take a chance; feel the wind st

Savina took. He involuntarily shut his eyes, and, rocking to the motion of his horse, heard, in the darkness, a soft settling fall, he saw an indefinite trace of whiteness which swelled into an incandescence that consumed him. They had turned toward home and, on a

e pressures floating, like water under night, through his brain. He would act differently; Claire wasn't practical-all that she indicated couldn't be followed. It was spun of nothing more substantial than the bright visions of youth; but the

out Savina Grove, to hear the sound of her praise if it were only on his own voice. It assisted his memory, created, like the faintly heard echo of a thrilling voice, a similitude not without its power to stir him. The secret realms of thought, o

for it. To Lee, William Loyd Grove was more immaterial than a final shred of mist lifting from the sunken road across the golf course; even his appreciation of the other's good qualities had vanished, leaving nothi

ngled conversations, bursts of popular song at the piano, and impromptu dancing through the length of the lower floor. The benches at either side of the fire-place were invariably crowded; and, from her place on the over-mantel, C

her left shoulder. She looked very well, he reflected; that was a becoming dimple in her cheek. He had had the beginning of an interest in her-

t you were infatua

great many questions, natural in a person named Cytherea. The pair of castanets on a nail-Claire used them in an Andalu

being fooled by that: they see a face or hear a voice that starts something or other going in them, and they supply a complete personality

inator and I'm the paté. But where, certainly, you are right is that she is only a representation; and it is wha

that she c

e began again, "But that could not be managed; not much can, with advantage, in this world." From beyond the hall, to the accompaniment of the piano, came the words, "She might have been a mother if she hadn't looped the loop." Lee m

"I'd think you were in love. You have a great many

aving signals, were visible. Returning, going into the dining-room, he saw that the whiskey had been plentifully spilled over the table. In the morning the varnish would be marred by white stains. The stairs were occupied, the angle in the hall behind which a door

ped his heart with an acute pain. His entire being was saturated with a longing that was at once a mental and physical disturbance. Nothing in his life, no throe of passion or gratification, had been like this. Lee hastily poured out a drink and swallowed it. He was burning up, he thought; it felt as though a furnace were open

ignity of mass from the night, might have been the reality of which it was no more than an admirable replica. There was little here, outside, to suggest or recall the passag

yet he was, unhappily, with them rather than with Fanny. God knew there was fever enough in his brain! But the winter night was cooling it-a minor image of the final office of death; the choking hunger for Savina was dwindling

ecognized it as passion, but passion to a degree beyond all former experience and comprehension. Why had it been quiescent so long to overwhelm him now? Or what had he done to open himself to such an inv

d sugary chocolate. They were hardly more than the fumes of alcohol. But the party showed no signs of ending, the piano continued to be played without a break;

sful. Isn't Borden sweet to bother teaching me that heel tap.

said. When he replied that this time he had returned to her, she shook her head sceptically. "But I suppose you have to say it." He dropped back into a corner of one of the benches; they were a jumble of skirts and reclining heads and elevated pumps. The victrola, at the end of a record and unattended, ran on with a shrill scratch. Cythe

ty: she emptied the widely scattered ash trays into a brass bowl, gathered the tall whiskey glasses and the glasses with fragile stems and brilliantly enamelled belligerent roosters, the empty charged water bottles, on the dresser in the pantry, and returned

isquiet of a month ago; no philosophical considerations nor abstract ideas absorbed him now-it was a weariness not of the mind but of the spirit, a complete sterility of imagination and incentive, as though an announced and coveted prize had been arbitrarily withdrawn during the struggle it

, not even tenderness, responded to her gestures of love. His indifference had been absolute! There had been periods of short duration when, exasperated with Fanny, he had lost the consciousness of his affection fo

a truth to be suppressed by weakened instincts. He didn't love Fanny and Fanny did love him ... a condition, he felt indignantly, which should be automatically provided against; none of the ethics of decency or conduct provided for that. It wasn't for a second, without the single, the

y no provision had been made for men, decent enough, who had stopped loving decent wives. Lee was not, here, considering the part of his life involved with Savina Grove: Savina had nothing to do with his attitude toward Fanny. This didn't hang on the affection he might have for one at the superficial e

ate, to Fanny. She must never know the truth. This was the crown of a present conception of necessity and unassailable conduct, of nobility. But, against this, Lee Randon was obliged to admit that he was not a particle noble; he wasn't certain that he wanted to be; he suspected it. Putting aside, for the moment, the doubtfulness of his being able to maintain successfully, through years, such an imposition, there was something dark, equally dubious, in its performance. He might manage it publicly, even superficially in private, and as a father; but marriage wasn't primarily a superficial relationship

ndemned the surrender of Savina and himself to passion, the latter, making it imperative, had brushed aside the barriers of recognized moral

bies and soft gold were worthless. Lee was opposed to his entire world; he had nothing but his questioning, his infinitesimal entity, for his assistance. Literally there wasn't a man to w

. It should be easy to be restrained in a situation that had small meaning or importance. What struck him again was the fact that his connection with Fanny was of far greater moment than that with Helena and Gregory. His responsibility to them was a minor affair compared to the weight increasingly laid upon their elders. Somehow, they didn'

d Gregory must have a pony. All four, Fanny and he and the children, would jog out in the spring together. From that mental picture he got a measure of reassurance; a condition resembling peace of mind again returned. As much as possible, against the elements of danger, was in his favor. He might have had a wife who, on the prevalent tide of gin and orange juice, of inordi

mothers ranged in chairs pushed against the wall in a spirit of interested attention. The Armory, following the general literal interpretation of the sternness of military usage, was gaunt, with a wide yellow floor and walls of unconcealed brick. In a far corner, on a temporary and unpain

ulably worn, permanently weary, although he was surprisingly sharp-eyed and adequate. It was, Lee thought unsympathetically, a curiously negative occupation for a man; the small graces of the dancing teacher, the bo

e; they would try it again; and the reiterated details were followed by the sounding of a whistle and music. Lee had no idea of the exact number of children engaged, but he was certain that there were just as many totally different executions of the steps before them. Not one had grasped an essen

ot a word was exchanged; except for the shuffling feet, the piano, an occasional phrase of encouragement from the instructor, himself gliding with a dab of fat in exaggerated ribbons, there wasn't a sound. To Lee it had the appearance of the negation of pleasure; it was, in its way, as bad as the determined dancing of adults; i

y embarrassed; he almost stopped. Lee Randon nodded for him to go ahead. There were various minor cataclysms-Helena flatly refused to dance with a boy who pursued her with an urging hand. At this conspicuous reverse he sat on a chair until the tea

is there was an equal engagement of rights with lefts. The assumption of gravity acutely bothered Lee Randon: they had no business, he thought, to be already such social animals. Their training in set forms, mechanical gestures and ideas, was too soon harden

pish humor; older and more robust boys scuffled together with half-subdued hails and large pretentions; groups of girls settled their skirts and brushed, with instinctive pats, their braids int

do you

y for granted; they regarded him very much as they did their cat; except for the conventional obeisance they made him, not so voluntary as it was trained into them, they were far more involved with Martha, the

n of Cytherea; a name, a tag, as intelligible as any for all his dissent. But cases like his were growing more prevalent; however, usually, in women. Men were the last stronghold of sentimentality. His thoughts were interrupted by a dramatic rift in the discipline of the class:

, holding its proportion in the reduced propriety of the occasion, was like a clap of communistic thunder in an ultra-conservative assembly. For a moment, together with all the others, Lee Randon was outraged; then, with a suppression

lted, divided and subdivided. Led by the instructor it was involved in an apparently issueless tangle and then straightened smoothly out. The dancing class at an end, Helena and Gregory, wedged into the seat with Lee in the car, swept int

ggested, "you'll

four girls," Hel

retorted, "I can

oser to them was proving a failure; what could he give them safer than their attachment to the imponderable body of public opinion and approval? He had nothing but doub

nes and Belgian grapes in Eastlake; but when she was in the city again she'd bring some out. "Mina Raff's limousine sounds luxurious," she acknowledged. But Fanny wasn't curious about Mina; after the first queries she accepted her placidly; now that she

quite affectionate when

suspense followed a sudd

bserved carefully. "When did he go, how long was h

t when I forget; but durin

Mr. Grove had gone to Washin

, striving, in a level tone, to hide his chagrin

d he com

ave way to a complete frankne

e restaurant and went to t

nyone, you are correct. What, in the

at I have feelings I can't account for. I always know when-when you've been a little silly; there is something in your eyes; but I have never felt like this before. Lee," she leaned suddenly forward, her hands clasping the sides of her chair, "you must be ab

's truth. At any cost he had to protect her. Lee replied by saying that it was useless to tell her facts in her present unreasonable humor. "Why didn't you tell me he

back from the theatre or take a drive?" He was amazed at her

amiliar with it. There's the afternoon for that, and the morning for the bridle path

talk to Mrs. Craddock for more than a minute at a time. Did you call her Savina?" Mrs. Craddock's name, he responded in

-restraint was

lieve a wor

on't ask

ish you'd look in the mirror and see how red and confused you are. It is too bad that I cannot depend on you af

garter on

urs. I never have looked at another man, nor been kissed, except that horrid one last July at the Golf Club." While she paused, breathless, he put in that it might do her good. "Oh, I see," sh

rels? You would never learn that way if there was the slightest, the slightest, cause for your bitterness. You have all you want, haven't you? The house and grounds are planted with your flowers, you are bringing up the children to be like yourself. I don't specially care

hat you dislike-we haven't had beefsteak for months; when you are busy with your papers I keep it like a grave; a

t's what I'm sick of-your eternal gabbling about comfort

me miserable; I kept wondering if Gregory was covered up and if the car would start when you wanted to go home. But I won't be sorry for it." Her head was up,

help," he comm

t cry," she contradicted the visible act; "I w

f sympathy for her; the division between them was absolute. With an angry movement she brushed

if you happen to mean her, is singularly a

is really too touching. Wh

saw that he had ma

s parting. And she agreed to let you go-back to your wife and children." Fanny's voice

well exhausted." Fanny, narrow-eyed, relapsed into an intent silence. She faded from his mind, her place taken by Savina. Immediately he was conscious of a quickening of

r him. The sense of a familiar difficulty returned; there was nothing for him to do but order his life on a common pattern and face an unrelieved futility of years. He remembered, with a grim amusement, the excellent advice he had given Peyton Morris, Peyton at the verge of falling from the approved heights into the unpredictable. If he had come to him now in that quandary

he evening before, at a dinner with Claire, and he had been silent, abstracted. He had scarcely acknowledged Lee Randon's p

practical and grey, it recommended itself to his reason; it successfully disposed of the difficulties of property, the birth and education of children, and of society. It was a sane, dignified, way to live with a woman; and it secured so much. Undoubtedly, on that count, marriage couldn't be bettered. As it was, it satisfied the vast majority of men and

annies of poverty, they flung themselves into a swift spending. The poor were more securely married than the rich, the dull than the imaginative-married, he meant, in the sense of a forged bond, a stockade. This latter condition had been the result of allowing the church to interfere unwa

a segregated and weakened form of worship. It was, for example, against the Christian influence that he was struggling. He meant the sense of profound mystery, the revolt against utter causelessness, which had tormented to no clearness so many generations of minds. He accepted the fact that a formless longing was all that he could e

gle cause. Why had he stopped loving Fanny and had no regret-but a sharp gladness-in his adultery with Savina? He discarded the qualifying word as soon as it had occurred to him: there was no adultery, adulteration, in his act with Savina; it had filled him with an energy, a mental and nervous vigor, long denied to the sanctified bed of marriage. H

o apparent connection with the moment, their actual passion. It had disturbed him with the suggestion of a false, a forced, note. In a situation of the utmost accomplishable reality it had been vague, meaningless. I love you. It was a strange phrase, at once empty and burdened with

rted utility for visions, at the enigmatic smile of Cytherea. A sterile circle. Some men called it heaven, others found hell. His mental searching, surrounded, met, by nullity, he regarded as his supreme effort in the direction of sheer duty. If whoever had it in

first, and they maintained a long self-glorifying, separated duet. The wi

dressed for riding, his horse was at the door, when, without previous announcement and unprepared, she decided to go with him. He could hear her hurry

-board. "Don't wait for me," she cried in a smothered voice; "it makes you so nervous. Just go; it doesn't matter what I

his horse stepping contrarily over the grass beyond the drive, he didn't care whether she came or stayed. When she appeared her eyes, prominent

lly surprised at the correctness of her attitude toward Savina; his wife could know nothing; she was even without the legitimate foundation of a suspicion; but her bearing had a perceptible frostiness of despa

prospect of old age. Fanny should not actually learn of the occurrence in New York, there must be no mistake about that; she would act on the supposition that he had been merely indulging in a more or less advanced dallying; but her patience in that, he judged, was at an end. Well, he could ultimately, in all sinc

had reduced him to the compounding of excuses; after her attack, drawing away, she had managed to make him follow her. Not cheaply, with the vulgarity of a gift, a price outheld, but with the repeated assertions of his endless love. Nothing less

ed the sooner for its swift explosive character. But this assurance was unconvincing; his presentiment, which didn't rest on reason, was not amenable to a reasonable conclusion. Of this he was certain, that Fanny never had harbored the suspicion of what, for her, would be the very worst. Did she know? If she

that, where Fanny was concerned, it was causeless, or no better than a wild surmise, a chance thrust at random. He made up h

the pape

ed level on the

ant the paper cutter. If it's

manda

n." She sat expectantly upright. Obliterating his cigarette, he r

for much from th

haven't even common good manners. That trip to New York-I'll hear the truth about it. Anyone could tell it was serious by the effect it had on y

save my nerves and the noise of your eternal questions. I knew,

to worry and hold you up. If it hadn't been for me-but there is n

observed; "now it is 'the Grove wo

that," Fanny said. "Lee Ra

u knew her, you

dying. But I have no doubt of

that his speech was growing

her Sa

her in an anger which h

and then she was rigid. "I knew that, all the while." Her voice was low, with a pause between the words. "Savina"; she repeated the name experim

lost temper. "You have made so much of this up that you had better fi

strange and smothered voic

ed flooring. "Your story is far more interesting than any in that," he commented, with a gesture. "It's a pity yo

t Claire, to keep Peyton Morris out of Mina Raff's hands. And, apparently, you succeeded but got in badly yourself. What a pair of hypocrites you were: all the while worse

t you felt?" he asked with

a loss. "It was inside me, like lead. But, whatever happen

ere might, even, be two more, Helena and Gregory; yes, and William Loyd Grove. What a stinking mess it was all turning out to be. Why wasn't life, why weren't women, reasonable? But he could not convince himself that anything final-a separation-threatened the

se to the effect that Christmas was a season for children. This recalled his own-they wouldn't be asleep yet

frozen purity of its barrenness. More than ever he was impressed by the remoteness of the children's bed-room from the passionate disturbances of living; but they, in the sense Fanny and he knew, weren't alive yet. They imitated the accents and concerns, caught at the gestures, of maturity; but, even in the grip of beginning instincts, they w

of Cytherea. Lee Randon hoped not; he wanted to advise him, at once, resolutely to close his eyes to all visions beyond the horizon of wise practicability. Marry, have children, be faithful, die, he said; but, alas, to himself. Gregory, smiling in eager anticipation of what might ensue, was necessarily ignorant of so much. Something again lay back of

ed heavy with weariness and rise hurried and absorbed. Over men so preoccupied, spent, Cytherea had no power. It was strange how her

re thinking a l

hinking about?"

plied, turning

," she

Gregory

his head. "Not yo

ld make you sick, father, hearing Gregory talk like that. It

," Gregory specified. "Perhaps

y modest." It w

, isn't it?

e up here to be with two good

armth about his neck. "I'm one, too," Gregory called urgently. "No," his fa

engagement; but the sentimental picture, cast across his thoughts, of himself being le

ok Helena's arms away from his neck and blurred the image of Gregory. "Have you said your prayer?" he asked absent-mindedly making conversation. Oh, yes, he was informed, they d

ered hurriedly. "I am sur

about his own devotions? Should he acknowledge that he thought prayer was no more than a pleasant form of administering to a sense of self-importance? Or, at most, a variety of self-help? Luckily they didn't ask. How outraged Fanny would be-he would be driven from the community-if he confessed the slightest o

as reluctant to have them go, leave him; the distance between them and himself appeared to widen immeasurably as he stood watching them settle for the night. He wanted to call them back,

these things had a look of indifferent treatment, of having been half cast aside. Gregory had wanted a typewriter; his jacket, at dancing-school, had been belted like his, Lee Randon's. They each had, in the lower

s course, his last unshakable position. Certainly in admitting that he had called Savina Grove by her first name he had justified Fanny's contention that he had kissed her. Fanny should have asked him how many times that had occurred. "A hundred," he heard himself, in

by Cytherea. Here, he addressed himself silently to the doll, you're responsible for this. Get me out of it. I'll put it all in your hands, that hand you have raised and hold half open and empty. But h

in which he had left her. And when he returned to t

le subject of Savina Grove from her mind; he couldn't tell; her exterior showed Lee Randon nothing, He waited, undecided if he'd smoke. Lee didn't, he found, want to. She shook her head, a startled look passed

th

suppose we must all be glad to have you pay attention to them at any time." This minor development he succeeded in avoiding. "I have been thinking hard,"

he change must principally be in me. If you'd explain it to me, what

plied; "I am not as impossible as you make

s outside home y

I won't have them, it, a minute longer. Not

been very d

vina," she flu

name and

tense, knocking over her stool. "And that you put your arms around

plied with a gleam of ma

ed the words. "Although I can easily guess why you didn't-

You have convinced yourself so positively t

e call

ere as well as later that I am not going to answer any of it; and I'll not listen to a great deal more.

e call me pathetic; if you only knew-disgracing yourself in New York, with a family at home. It is too common

of greenish light. It was exactly as though her fury, a generated incandescence of rage, had burned into a perceptible flare. This, he realized, was worse than he had anticipated; he saw no safe issue; it was entirely serious. Lee was aware of a vague sorrow, a wish to protect Fanny, from herself as mu

in an entire intimacy. Dissolved by his indifference, the past vanished like a white powder in a glass of water. She might have been a woman overta

laugh is how you thought you could explain and lie and bully me. Anything would do to tell me, I'd swallow it like one of those big grapes." She was speaking in gusts, between the labored heavings of her bre

e you'll be sick

nute, I'll be sick. Don't you see, you damned fool," her voice rose until it se

be more alive. If I were you, though, I'd go up to bed; we've had enough of this, or I have; I can'

as shifting, as well; the indifference was becoming bitterness; the bitterness glittered, like mica, with points of hatred. He felt this, like an actual substance, a jelly-like poison, in his blood, affecting hi

I thought you might hide what you really were a little longer; it seemed to me you might try to

insinuations. You haven't any idea of marriage except as a bed-room farce. You're so pure that you imagine more indecencies in a day than I could get through with in five years. If there were one I hadn'

children. You brought me here, and made me have them, all the blood and tea

trouble you,"

articulate, each word was pronounced as though it had cost

like this, if I weren't helpless, if I could do anything. But I can't, and you are safe. I am only your wife and not some filthy woman in New York." As she moved her head the streaming tears swung out from her face. "

until her head rolled as though her neck were broken. Even in his transport of

ose from its knot, slowly cascaded over one shoulder. Then stumbling, groping,

, left him with a sensation of emptiness and degradation. The silence-after the last audible dragging footfall of Fanny slowly mounting the stairs-was appalling: it was as though all the noise of all the world, concentrated in his head, had been stopped at once and forever. He r

ed to curiosity, but mainly his thoughts, his illimitable disgust, were directed at himself. His anger, returning like the night wind from a different direction, cut at himself, at the collap

eing wrapped in a feather bed, the need to make a violent gesture-sending the white fluff whirling through space-and so be free to breathe. This house, the symmetrical copied walls, the harmonious rugs, symbols of public success and good opinion, the standard of a public approbation, exasperated him beyond endurance. He wanted to push t

asping at the petticoats-where they were worn-of variety. Lee wished that he could do this in the presence of everyone he knew; he wanted to see their outraged faces, hear the shocked expressions, as he insulted, demolished, all that they

lder, immaculately white except for the leaden bruises of his fingers, was bare, and an arm, from which her jewelled wrist watch had

affair. I'm done." Still she didn't move, reply. "I am going," he said more impatiently, "tonight. I want you to understand that this is final. You were too good a wife; I couldn't keep even with you; and I can't say, now, that I want to. Everyone will t

espair. "I can't talk," she said; "the words are all hard like stones down in my heart. You'll have to go; I can't stop you; I knew

to blame. All, all the fault is mine; it would take too long to explain, you wouldn't believe me-you couldn't-and

"A thing like this couldn't be happening to us,

ental indulgence, he felt, was dangerously out of place. She slipped b

on was lost in the knowledge that he would go to New York where, inevitably, he should see Savina. No one could predict what would determine that; it would unfold, his affair with Savina must conclude, as it had begun-in obedience to pressures beyond their control. An increasing excitement flowed over him at the thought of being with her, posse

y wrong, lacking, about him, and he was embarked on the first violent stage of physical and mental degradation. It couldn't be helped, he told himself, once more down stairs, in the hall. Beyond, the stool lay where Fanny had kicked it; and he bent over to pick up the copper

eek; and he wondered if the parallel he had established would hold true to the end. In the main aspect, he concluded, yes. But the pig had died without experiencing what was, undoubtedly, both the fundamental duty and recompens

nd Fanny's room; the rest of the house, except for the glimmer below, was dark. The winter night was encrusted with stars. A piercing regret seized him-that he was past the middle of forty and not in t