It was difficult, Iris began (when all these things had settled into
the limbo of our past lives), to tell me in a matter-of-fact way
exactly when and exactly why she had come to be distressed by the
nearness of her husband and his brother to each other. It had just
grown, by very devious ways and windings, though not so stealthily
but that she hadn't noticed the discomfort of it; but, as with such
things, it had seemed altogether so unreasonable and fanciful a feeling
that she had never ceased trying to discourage it within herself; and
it was only at the end that, with quite a burst, her fear had finally
overcome her sense of absurdity, and had scattered it back to the
shades that had sent it to delude her for so long--only at the very end!
At first and for a little time after she was, as I had seen that
afternoon, happy about their friendship. She was pleased with the
success of her plot, it seemed so much like a bad thing put right, one
more "bogey" exorcised from this world. And, mainly, she was pleased
for Roger's sake.... Ah yes, that would surprise me, to whom she had
made such a fuss about wanting to help Antony! But Antony had only been
an incident of her plot--she had seized this idea and given him the
leading part, while Roger and she would get as much or more benefit
from it than he. How the idea of using Antony's suggestion of the
masquerade had come to her she didn't know, but it had come forcefully
enough for her to take great pains about his disguise; the idea that it
would somehow be of great good to Roger to make it up with his brother,
that this new affection (she had an instinct that the brothers were
really very fond of each other, but pettily arrogant) might make him
more, well, tangible--to her!
"My dear, of course I wanted to make him tangible to me, possible to
me. I always wanted that. Don't you realise that ever since I first
met him every thought I had, however little I realised it, was really
concerned with him and about him? My feeling for him had crept into
my veins, it was as much a part of me as my voice is, and no amount
of hardening my heart against him could drive it out. And, as you
know, my heart grew hard enough; I had begun to close myself against
him soon after our honeymoon, quite, quite tightly, as one can if one
tries very hard. It was my only defence, you see, I couldn't hit back
nor really leave him, for there's simply no pride in love.... And I
had succeeded, hadn't I? By the time Antony came back my defences were
so strong, so strong that I began to think I must have exaggerated my
love as much as one has always suspected one's friends of exaggerating
theirs: almost to treat my love with a bedside manner, it seemed so
dim and ailing.... But it was there all the time, I suppose, love only
playing at indifference, the only game that grown-ups continue to play
after childhood, but never so well as children could play it if they
weren't too wise to try. And as soon as Antony said he'd like to make
friends with Roger and suggested how it could best be done, some part
of my mind fixed on it and made a dream, of how Roger might change,
wonderfully. It was just a chance, and anyway it would help Antony.
"I was happy about it at first, it seemed that I might have been right
about Roger, perhaps he might become more tangible--until there came
the little shocks, earthquakes in the air and under my feet! The first
one was their sudden distaste for you, Ronnie, even though I did seem
so snappy with your grievance. In Roger it only surprised me, though
very unpleasantly, for he was apt to make these sudden dislikes. But in
Antony, though I didn't tell you, it shocked me, I couldn't understand
it, it seemed the sort of thing a man might do in a book, a renegade
kind of thing--not that he said anything in particular against you, he
hadn't the face to do that before _me_; but his attitude of a kind of
contempt was quite enough in a man whom I knew you had been so very
nice to, even though you had always seen through him. But I thought I
would wait a little while before thoroughly disliking 'poor' Antony, as
it might be just one more of those freak perversities which you and I
have often been so impatient about in both of them. So I didn't mind
when he came to live at the house about then, and anyway I couldn't see
more of him than before, for he was at dinner every night.
"Then came the disappointment of Roger's slacking away from the House
and from everything to do with it. And though that seemed to have
nothing to do with Antony (how could it?) I couldn't resist a vague
idea.... Even before Antony came back he had begun to be more and more
interested in the City and less in politics, but now he seemed to have
become altogether a business man. There was something particularly
dreary about that disappointment, for Roger's public life had never
lost its glamour for me. I had always been interested in his career,
and interested in him as a bright part of dull affairs. All that
political stuff had seemed to become his personality so well, and
besides it seemed the only proper outlook for his passion to dominate
people--and now I would have to lose even that much of him! that part
of him that I read about in the papers, and that had seemed to be
really mine. A funny contradiction, that his wife should treasure only
that part of him which the whole world knew as well or better than
she....
"I showed my bitter disappointment when one day he told me he was
thinking of resigning his seat; and, do you know, he actually seemed
apologetic about it! It was strange, that air of apology about him, and
the way he looked at me from the door as he went out, as though to say
he was sorry for having let me down! Let me down!
"That was the first time I realised a new gentleness about him,
something I hadn't seen in him even when he had made love to me before
we were married. I was very young then, and thought he made love so
well then because of his gentleness, whereas it was only practice, like
being good at billiards. But now there was this queer air of gentleness
about the way he sometimes looked at me, almost of weakness. And maybe
my surprise at it made it seem even more intangible than it was, for
it seemed to be nearer the ceiling than to me, I couldn't somehow
reach it; and I didn't dare try to, I wanted to touch him but I was
afraid--he had done the awful thing, had made my heart suspicious,
which is degrading to oneself and to the person one loves. And so,
at first, I mistrusted my own weakness for being hurt by him, and I
mistrusted him.... But if Antony had been a different sort of man
I would have blessed him for somehow or other having brought that
gentleness on Roger, for of course he had something to do with it in a
contrary way, I thought.
"I suppose my disappointment at his leaving the House had something
to do with my boredom at the eternal talks about business. Money,
money, money. Something about Mexico and oil, as far as I could gather,
that Antony had brought back to England; and I could only hope that
there was a lot of oil to make up for the amount of talk about it,
and interest in it.... They left together in the morning and came
back together in the evening, sometimes quite late, as dull a pair of
business men as ever got be-knighted; and the only people that Roger
asked to the house were odd Napoleonic kind of men, very good at being
'merchant princes' I've no doubt, and the usual gamblers--who, as far
as I could see, were very good at gambling, by the amount that Roger
seemed nowadays to lose to them, mainly at poker.
"Roger had never talked to me about money affairs, I being
old-fashioned with my affectations of stupidity. But I had realised
that things were not going so well with him as they used to, that his
immersion in the City and retirement from politics had a great deal to
do with being temporarily hard up. He's having a run of bad-luck, I
thought, and must be a little worried about it; though it struck me as
strange that Roger should worry about money, for he had always such an
air of complete detachment from it. But it must be that that is on his
mind, I thought as I looked at him, and thus found a plausible reason
for his rather feverish and seedy looks.
"His face, as you know, was always colourless, and his eyes very
bright, but he had never looked unhealthy; a kind of vitality and
vividness had always made him seem very alive and well. But just
lately I had thought he looked rather too pale and haggard--and then,
one night at dinner, I realised suddenly that my Roger was terribly
thin, a long, thin, white-faced man with brilliant eyes--but so thin!
Of course, he had always been like that, but one had thought of him
as supple, not thin--and now, suddenly, it seemed to me that his
thinness was the most apparent thing about him! And there, at the other
side of the table, was Antony, redder than ever, burlier than ever,
healthier than ever, and growing, I thought, a good deal stouter. And,
resenting him, I suddenly resented his healthy good looks in contrast
to his brother's nervous paleness, and--why, my dear, I couldn't take
my eyes from Roger that night, he seemed so white and delicate, so
quite unlike himself, unlike the man I knew! Of course, it was silly
of me to be surprised at it, since he had always looked rather white
and delicately made--but so self-confidently delicate that one had
never thought of him as particularly so. But now a touch of worry and
weakness seemed to have pruned that self-confidence away from his body,
and I seemed to see what had always been there under a cover; a kind of
shadow where I had grown used to a kind of tyrant....
"I accused him of being not well, but he said that it was only that he
was a little tired and overworked: 'But if everything goes well I will
buy a villa near Cannes, Iris, and we will go there, and leave Antony
to do all the work. Antony is a great financier, you must know....' And
he left the sentence in the air, looking at him with a smile; while
Antony said with a laugh to me: 'If only I had Roger's brain with which
to carry out my ideas you wouldn't be able to see me for money, Iris,
nor yourself for Teclas.' But you know Antony, how he could never make
the most comical boast without giving one an unpleasant idea that he
really believed in it--and how unpleasantly absurd it suddenly was, the
idea of Antony acquiring Roger's brain just to set me up in pearls!
"That was just about a month before that night you and I will always
remember. But how, my dear, was I to know or even dream of what was to
come? What did I know about the fall in cotton prices and the upside
downs of that oil thing, of which I heard of vaguely as Cascan Oil?...
"All I actually did know was that Roger's health was weak, and that
began to worry me to the exclusion of nearly all else; but, from his
'faded' looks, I thought he was probably right in saying that it
was overwork, and I didn't dare to pester him about it, for I could
trust no amount of gentleness in him to rid him of his contrary
perversities--but I would take him away at the first possible moment,
which, I vowed, would be very soon indeed! Oh yes, Ronnie, how many
chances one gives God for saying that He knows better....
"And it was about that time of my worrying about Roger's health that
I noticed that the relations between him and Antony had changed since
I had had the feeling that they were so interested in each other as
scarcely to notice me. But I can't express it except by saying that
they seemed gradually to have changed from a great amiability to an
electric kind of chaff--which, as that about Antony and finance, Roger
generally led and Antony followed as best he could. I remembered then
what you had told me about them at school, but there was nothing like
that between them now, no jeers from Antony, and only a very kindly
sort of contempt from Roger. It was contempt surely enough, that look
Roger gave him now and then, but a contempt wrapped in a good-natured
smile: his 'Antony' smile, I rather jealousy called it to myself, for
he had never turned to _me_ with that particular kind of good-nature
with which he smiled at Antony. And there was certainly no such
quarrelsomeness as we had all come to expect from Antony, even when
Roger might sting just a little bit sharply; in fact, the remarkable
thing about him, I thought, was his great deference, not so much to
Roger, but to Roger's intelligence. He seemed to have convinced himself
that his brother was the cleverest man in the world, and he had a way
of sometimes repeating what Roger had just said tacked on to one of his
great laughs, and an air about him as though to say: 'Just look what a
clever brother I've got!'
"What could I think about Antony, my dear! To me he was always
charming, but charming, and quite naturally. Antony, as you know,
always wore courtesy when he needed it like a rather flamboyant cloak
flapping in a north wind, but to me he was always quite natural with
it--just as in those days at your flat when I liked him so genuinely.
But I had somehow come to mistrust him--and more deeply than one can
mistrust one's friends' weaknesses while continuing to like them. And
when I saw, or felt I saw, that contempt in Roger's eyes, I was more
than ever uncomfortable about Antony. It seemed that Roger mistrusted
him too--but that he didn't mind mistrusting him, it made no difference
to his liking for him! Imagine the smoke from that dim fire, the
theories that would chase through my head as we sat at dinner, often
rather silently! And then the next moment I would wonder impatiently
what the deuce all the fuss was about. They were such friends, after
all!... But no sense of absurdity could so easily rid me of the feeling
that Roger knew very well what Antony was about, but that he was just
waiting, ever so good-naturedly, just letting things be. Roger to let
things be!..."
And as Iris repeated those words about him I understood very well the
reflected astonishment in her eyes. It must have been strange, Roger
"letting things be!" about whom the most vivid fact had always been
that he must try to colour and influence anything that he touched or
that touched him, men or work or circumstance.... But, Iris said, _she_
couldn't let things be! As that month grew she realised that, absurd or
not, there was something strangely the matter: and that if there was
ever to be any levelness forced upon their present life she must be
its direct agent. But she couldn't for the moment worry about Antony;
nothing could be done until some kind of solidity had been coaxed back
into Roger's health, for he seemed lately so gravely feeble.
By this time, although she had not realised its every stage, all her
bitterness and resentment at his past scepticisms and perversities had
passed from her mind; leaving her, despite her perplexities, happier
and lighter, as after the expulsion of ugly grotesques from a sacred
place. Her heart had opened to him, not artificially before his new
weakness of health, but from a more profound realisation of the man
himself. Now that she had lost that mistrust of him, he seemed so near
to her; and it was as though the past wretched two years had not been
except to deepen and widen her love, this love, it seemed, that had
been found good but not good enough, and so had been sealed up for a
time to allow builders to shape it into a more workable intensity; and
now it had grown more complete and wiser than that first impulse to
utter abandon which he had roused in her, and which had never been but
an electric current of unhappiness between them. Now she understood
him a little better--if it was understanding him to know clearly that
she could have awakened this gentleness in him long before. He was one
of those men who couldn't give but must be made to. She should have
plundered where she had pleaded. She should have played the buccaneer
to this man who had grown so used to being taken for one.... But now,
she saw, it was too late to fly the Jolly Roger, for he had come by
some knowledge of himself from a hidden turning on that well-paved road
which he had trod with so well-poised an arrogance; and, in yielding to
what had suddenly--and yes, secretly--come, he had yielded something
from his health, some part of his vitality. Yes, it was too late to
play at buccaneering now. First she must coax back his full health, and
quietly wait for him to realise completely her new understanding of
him. No half-way fulfilment this time, in this new love-affair that she
knew was coming to them! She couldn't bear that--she must wait until he
knew himself, so that he could love without any of those retractions
that had made such a wretched muddle of it all before.
So, letting love be as well as she could, she now disregarded any
irritation she might cause, and began to "pester" him about his
health: saying that whether it was overwork or not he must see a
doctor. Until one evening, Antony having gone out after dinner, as she
was complaining about the stupid insensibility of men to their own
well-being, he said that it really was a very common complaint and not
worth seeing a doctor about: just bad-luck, he said.
"But how bad-luck? Do be serious, please, Roger.... I am so tired of
fantasies...."
"Just the thing itself, my dear--just bad-luck. Now why should that be
a fantasy? Isn't it expressive enough, or do you think that the only
serious illnesses are those that doctors get paid for discovering and
the Lord be thanked for curing?"
"It's not that, but when one hears of some one being ill of his luck
one thinks of a boneless, watery kind of man who thinks the world is
against him because a favourite has lost him a fiver."
"But I told you, Iris, that I meant just the fact of bad-luck, not any
particular loss from it." And then he explained, but ever so mildly,
as though to a child who mightn't very readily understand an obvious
fact.
"'It's very simply, and quite logical, I think. Have you ever realised,
Iris, that since you met me I have always won? Well, all my life has
been like that, I have always won--I don't mean only at cards and
racing but at everything that is supposed to make life worth living,
those various prizes that we put our names down for. Some men take
their paths in life steadily and calculate their progress step by
step by hard work, and some men just have a throw at what they most
want from time to time--they may work hard to have deserved it after
they have got it, but they get it by a chance, by backing themselves
against the field. But that is such a poor description, for it's
never such a conscious thing as that, the throw comes from a real
part of one's nature. It's only a conscious trait in that awful type
of "hotel-lounge" American who has many diamond tie-pins and wants
every one to know that he lives by bluff and hazard, and in other
fools who think that a strange glamour reflects on them from taking
chances--whereas to take a chance is just the business of one's nature,
it's the business of one's life, just like art or grocery. One gambles
naturally or not at all, and the people who lose are mainly those who
gamble for some other purpose than the mere fact of gambling, as any
_croupier_ in any Casino will tell you....'
"He stopped and looked absently across at me with that half satiric
smile that crept about his face when he spoke about himself--which was
so seldom that I was now listening with all the nerves of my body. And
then, each word very slowly and distinctly, as one might count the
caskets of a fabulous treasure--
"'I have always won,'" he said.
(I'll leave you to imagine, Ronnie, that if it is possible for any man
to make such a statement without seeming to boast his good fortune,
Roger so made it).
"I can't tell you any more about it than you can find from just that
sentence,' he explained, 'I don't know why I've won. I don't know.
But I suppose that it somehow came naturally to me to win every time
I ventured--whether it was for money or anything else. Always a good
seat on the front bench, and sometimes the very first seat of all....
I know how difficult it is for you not to think I'm exaggerating, for
every one does exaggerate one way or the other when talking roundabout
the chances they've taken. But, Iris, dear, please believe that I'm
exaggerating less than people usually do when I tell you that I grew
to take the fact of winning as, well, my right--as part of me, don't
you see? Without very particularly realising or fostering it, it grew
to work out like that....
"'Yes, my good-luck or whatever it was, was certainly a part of me,'
he repeated. 'And a very important part, if one's good health is
important--why, Iris, my good-luck was the very key and centre of it!
It must have been.... And does that, after all, seem so fantastic? that
my whole zest and confidence and vitality, everything you first saw in
me, were made up of my luck? I was nothing without them, the things of
my luck--and you didn't know the man, Iris, you only knew the luck.
The luck was the man, don't you see? and without it the man was--well,
I'm damned if I know what he was! I can't remember ever not winning,
so I've never had to examine myself until lately. For, of course, I
didn't realise all I have told you until just lately--I suppose I am
the kind of man to prospect rather than introspect when on top of a
mountain. But I realise it all well enough now that there's such a poor
view from the lowest ridge. I know now what my worst enemy would never
have dreamt of saying of me, that I am a bad loser--a very bad loser in
its really fundamental sense. Other people may lose or win with their
faces, but it seems that I win or lose with my whole being.... The fact
is that I can't lose, I simply don't know how. Don't you see that I
can't lose, Iris? It saps all my vitality.... Poor Iris, to be married
to a man who is only a man so long as he wins.'
"The little smile had clung to his face all the while, like a faint
light about its shadows; and maybe it was the self-mockery of it that
made his manner so much lighter than his words--which towards the end
had seemed to fall wearily and listlessly, as though he had resigned
himself to do a duty. And it must have been a deeper self-accusation
than any words could express that had helped him to humiliate himself
in a matter-of-fact way of explanation. For to him, Roger, what
humiliation! To have realised within himself that he, of all the men in
the world, was that strangely contemptible thing, I don't quite know
why, a bad loser! To confess that realisation to me could add nothing
to the humiliation, for Roger was never but first audience to his own
acting, never but the main person in any gallery to which he might
play! He stood or fell by himself, and if he fell, no other's judgment
could count beside his own.
"How, then, could I tell him at that moment on what, as he was
speaking, my mind had fixed--so that I could scarcely restrain the
cry of my discovery, scarcely bear not jumping up from my chair to
hold him to me. But to him, an egoist, realising that aspect himself,
what possible consolation in telling him of my discovery? the reverse,
maybe, another blow.... The vivid fact that I was intensely glad at the
failure of his luck! All those arrogancies and dominations with which
he had first charmed, then repelled, and always baffled one (they had
seemed so out of one's reach to prick them, perched so confidently on a
highest pinnacle of assurance): the whole of his easy mastery over life
that had bred his 'confidence,' 'vitality'--I saw now that they were
just the scum over his good-luck, a kind of verdigris that had made me
grow to despise them, however unwillingly. 'You never knew the man, you
only knew the luck. The man was nothing.' ... Poor dear, he was so sunk
in that realisation that he couldn't possibly realise the vastness of
the parallel one that it had roused in me: that the man was everything,
the luck worse than nothing, just a slaughter-house for every quality
with which my love had dowered him.
"And so, glad as I was at the result in himself from his change of
luck, its result in his health lost some of its seriousness--as a thing
that is explained generally does, unless it is too bad. For I certainly
didn't take his explanation of it as 'fantasy,' it was quite obvious
that he had his finger on the real cause of his weakness. Given the
other extreme, as he had so candidly explained it, why shouldn't a
man fail in health with the failing of his luck? But I felt that he
was more affected by the shock of it than by its contemplation--and,
after all, I didn't love him weakly, I could deal with a shock, be it
ever so mental. His air of resignation, so foreign in him, disturbed
me a little; but, I thought, that is a natural part of the ailment and
one will deal with them both at a time. Yes, the thing would mend of
itself, for it carried its own cure with it, in a new and deepening
knowledge of himself. He would be better even before the pendulum of
this strange 'luck' of his had swung back again; and I had no fear from
what its swinging back to 'good' might bring to us both, for he was now
learning the lesson of himself beyond all un-learning.
"So I thought, anyway, after I had persuaded Roger, that same night,
to explain just a bit of what had been happening to him in the great
world--where, it seemed, luck of sorts made such a mess of men. And
indeed it was only a very little bit that he explained, for he was
tired, and said that it was a long and dull history, even though it
hadn't taken very long to happen. 'Exactly how long?' I asked, but he
evaded that--else maybe I had known so very much more!
"'As you know, when a writer wants to be done with one of his
characters,' he explained, 'he sometimes throws a few bad investments
and bucket-shops at the poor man and he's done for before you turn
the page. Well, there are plenty of such things outside books, and
I somehow seem to have happened on one or three of late. And these
_debacles_ always happen in the same way, if they are going to happen
at all, to men whose money is mostly on paper. The paper actually
becomes paper--and now even a French _gendarme_ wouldn't accept as a
tip most of the stuff that was once my fortune. I thought I had tried
every way there was of spending money, but I had never realised that
losing it was the quickest. I know now. And that's all, Iris.'
"'But, my dear, it doesn't matter all that much! After all,
bad-luck was never more than bad-luck seen in the Book of Job. It's
inconvenient, of course--'
"'It's certainly that. But, of course, all your money is quite safe
and doing very well, and I'll see any creditor to hell before you dare
pay him one penny of any debt of mine. I'd have you know that the
best bankrupts are always very touchy about the thoroughness of their
bankruptcies.... But, as you say, Iris, all that doesn't matter very
much.'
"If he agreed about that, then why was he getting himself ill over
it? I was going to heckle him, when he explained--and with what so
far unknown deference, in him, to one's bewilderment!--that he had
not been worrying about losing the money, nor so very much about the
now almost certain bankruptcy: 'Although that is really so serious
for me that I've got to joke about it or be as entirely silent as I
have been--and will be after to-night,' he excused his levity to warn
me. 'But it's actually the naked fact that these things can and have
happened to oneself that has got on my nerves--which must, I suppose,
be very tender nerves. Just the change of luck, you see, rather than
its particular results, however serious.' ...
"But before we went upstairs he took me by the shoulder with some
of his old air of authority, and warned me that he would be very
disappointed if I worried over what he had told me. 'Because, after
all, I didn't tell you about it because I wanted to--but simply so
that you shouldn't worry so much about my health now you know that it
isn't due to a weak heart or a damaged lung--only damaged luck, after
all! And I may, just possibly may, find a way out of everything in the
next few weeks.'
"'With Cascan Oil?' I asked, as though it were a magic oil.
"But I didn't gather anything from his smile except that it was one
of those smiles that never answer questions in the way you want them
answered. 'It's certainly very good oil!' he only said.
"'And will you promise to tell me as soon as you have found your way
out, as of course you will, you being you, luck or no luck?' I asked
him firmly. 'And will you also promise to drop some of this air of
resignation or whatever it is that has lately been growing on you?
please, Roger, for although it makes you very kissable at home, I'm
sure it's likely to make you quite "broke" in the great world--which
doesn't care how much your wife loves you so long as it can get your
money.'
"He promised to tell me--for I had fixed in my mind that as soon as he
came to me with never so little brighter news I would at once snatch
him away from London to some place like Tangiers, to mend his health
and let the deuce take his luck, which was a plague, good or bad. And
you know when he brought me news, at lunch-time two weeks later, the
day before that....
"He rang up from the City to ask me if I would be in for lunch; and it
was so unusual for him to come home for lunch that I quite ran wild
in putting you off, so that you developed a wonderful theory about my
having found a new young man from the back row of the Russian Ballet.
"Almost the first word he said when he came in was, 'Well, that's
finished.' But as he said it with almost a smile and quite
undramatically I didn't expect, as I 'registered' pleasure, to be
pulled up by:
"'I mean there are no more uncertainties to worry about, Iris. The rats
have got at everything.'
"'Then,' I said, 'we can go away for a lovely holiday with my money.
To-morrow, for instance....' You see I never did believe much in
standing on one's dignity about money and honour, for money's a messy
thing anyway.
"But he was staring at me so differently, so pitiably almost, and with
no smile anywhere to light his tired face, that I had to leave my
holiday in the air, miserably wondering at him.
"'If it was only that kind of mess!' he said at last simply, as though
I would understand by that!
"He wouldn't talk about anything to do with it through lunch, and I had
to sit there with my heart screwed up for fear of what he was going to
tell me now. Oh, I loved him so as he sat almost silently facing me,
his thin face set so firmly that it looked drawn on that lovely paper
you find in Kelmscott books; and his eyes, those so efficient eyes, now
and then playing darkly with the sun through the large window behind me.
"It was as we were leaving the table that he suddenly threw his bomb,
which hasn't really yet finished exploding in me. He threw it with a
sudden, quiet smile and a look over my shoulder. He threw it as though
it were a marvellous joke.
"'You very thoroughly let the rats in through that window that night,
didn't you, Iris?'
"And I stared at him confounded, while my fingers groped about the
table for something to hold, to hold tightly.... And I suddenly saw
red, a kind of blind anger tore at me to tear him:
"'Then why didn't you kick him out? Why did you let him stay on and on?
I thought he was foul and that he hated you, but you knew for certain
all the time--and yet you've let him stay, like a weak fool!' And I
felt like screaming out my detestation of the whole atmosphere about
them, the silly childish darkness of it all....
"How shrill I must have been at that moment! But you see, all the half
conscious fears of the past months had suddenly burst true and shaken
me quite beyond myself. And now I was so wildly sick to realise his
lassitude--and he looking silently down from his height at me, unmoved
by my anger except to that faint, irritating smile.
"'You knew he hated you, you knew he hated you,' I accused him
trembling.
"'But I didn't hate _him_,' he said mildly. 'I've loved Antony, you
see.'