"But I wish I knew if it were right. Tell me, Teddy Bear, is it right or wrong?"
"Ah, my dear, that's just what I've been wondering for the last thirty years."
"Be serious, Teddy Bear. I want to know if this is right; if it's right that I should be here with you and that we should love one another, and that it should give me electric shocks when you touch me."
"Right? Well, it's certainly good that you should have electric shocks rather than sexual repressions. Read Freud; repressions are the devil."
"Oh, you don't help me. Why aren't you ever serious? If only you knew how miserable I am sometimes, thinking it's not right. Perhaps, you know, there is a hell, and all that. I don t know what to do. Sometimes I think I ought to stop loving you."
"But could you?" asked Mr. Hutton, confident in the powers of his seduction and his moustache.
"No, Teddy Bear, you know I couldn't. But I could run away, I could hide from you, I could lock myself up and force myself not to come to you."
"Silly little thing!" He tightened his embrace.
"Oh, dear, I hope it isn't wrong. And there are times when I don't care if it is."
Mr. Hutton was touched. He had a certain protective affection for this little creature. He laid his cheek against her hair and so, interlaced, they sat in silence, while the car, swaying and pitching a little as it hastened along, seemed to draw in the white road and the dusty hedges towards it devouringly.