"No," Jean said, "I didn't know." The calm was broken for a moment by a spark of cold anger at the insincerity of the question, or its implication.
The Kitten shrugged and turned to Herrick. She was trembling with anger now and it made her look like a fierce, small animal at bay.
Jean's calm was swept aside in a wave of physical nausea. She could not stand there and see them quarrel. She moved to Herrick.
"Will you go? Please go. Quick! Now!"
"If you wish." Grotesque in his consideration, pitiful in his relief, Herrick went. They heard his step echo and die in the silence below.
Jean and The Kitten stood looking at each other. Before Jean's calm, The Kitten's anger crumbled. Jean went slowly back to her place at the table and sat down again. Her brain seemed the only living thing about her. She had a problem to solve, but the problem concerned the woman before her more than it concerned herself. There was something she was going to do, but she couldn't do it until she had talked to The Kitten, and she didn't know just how to begin. She sat with her chin in her palms, as she had sat while Herrick made calculations about the cost of the pamphlet.
"Didn't you really know?" It was The Kitten who broke the silence at last. "He always said you didn't, but I never believed it."
"Did you think that I would have gone on just the same?"
"I didn't know. You never loved him. What difference would it make?" The Kitten waited a moment and added more kindly, as if she were making something very clear to a child. "Vicky has loved other women; he's always having an affair of some kind, and I don't say anything. You see, I don't love him."
Jean did not move. She sat rigid as if the least movement would precipitate her into the abyss The Kitten was opening before her.