She saw, she heard Mr. Mercaptan reading his essay. Poor father, reading aloud from the Hibbert Journal!
And now the Cossack, covered with blood. He, too, might read aloud from the Hibbert Journal—only backwards, so to speak. She had a bruise on her arm. “You think there’s nothing inherently wrong and disgusting in it?” he had asked. “There is, I tell you.” He had laughed and kissed her and stripped off her clothes and caressed her. And she had cried, she had struggled, she had tried to turn away; and in the end she had been overcome by a pleasure more piercing and agonizing than anything she had ever felt before. And all the time Coleman had hung over her, with his blood-stained beard, smiling into her face, and whispering, “Horrible, horrible, infamous and shameful.” She lay in a kind of stupor. Then, suddenly there had been that ringing. The Cossack had left her. And now she was awake again, and it was horrible, it was shameful. She shuddered; she jumped out of bed and began as quickly as she could to put on her clothes.
“Really, really, won’t you come?” Mrs. Viveash was insisting. She was not used to people saying no when she asked, when she insisted. She didn’t like it.
“No.” Coleman shook his head. “You may be having the last supper. But I have a date here with the Magdalen.”
“Oh, a woman,” said Viveash. “But why didn’t you say so before?”
“Well, as I’d left the door open,” said Coleman, “I thought it was unnecessary.”
“Fie,” said Mrs. Viveash. “I find this very repulsive. Let’s go away.” She plucked Gumbril by the sleeve.
“Good-bye,” said Coleman, politely. He shut the door after them and turned back across the little hall.
“What! Not thinking of going?” he exclaimed, as he came in. Rosie was sitting down on the edge of the bed pulling on her shoes.
“Go away,” she said. “You disgust me.”