“Only a week ago she told me that. The wide-set, luminous eyes were dilated and very tender; the lines of the pouted mouth became softer and less sensual. Then she shrugged her shoulders and was once again the petulant, cynical child of pleasure. ‘But afterwards,’ she sighed.
“You had that moment, though,” I said, and I began to quote from Meredith: “‘Love that had robbed us of immortal things.’ But she interrupted me. ‘I know, I know, but I had to pay for it, and I am asking myself whether it was worth the price. Men and women, they are just paths that intersect and then go their own ways. We had a while of perfect harmony; then Roger grew tired of me at the very moment when I had really begun to love him. Although I knew that he didn’t love me, I tried to keep him; and that’s degrading, it hurts one’s self-respect. It’s always like that, or else it’s the other way; one wants a man, one woos him, one makes love to him; and then as soon as one’s got him, one’s tired of him.’
“‘From which,’ I said, ‘one may gather that you are finding Paul a little too exacting.’
“The hazel eyes flashed a look of grateful recognition.
“‘There’s nothing about that man, my dear, that doesn’t absolutely exasperate me, and he won’t let me alone. He rings me up every hour of the day; he sends me letters by special messenger. I can’t get away from him. It seems incredible to me that eighteen months ago I couldn’t be happy away from him; that I could think of nothing but him; that my heart beat every time I heard the postman’s knock, every time the bell of the telephone rang. I don’t know how it happened. His wife, I think, very largely. I hated her, the great fat cow, so domineering and unwomanly. I hated the proprietary way in which she said, “my husband.” I wanted to humble her. There was pity in it, too: Paul looked so forlorn as he sat plucking at his beard while his wife’s voice boomed across the dinner table. But it’s hard enough to know how one felt a year and a half ago, let alone the “why” of it. I wanted him; that’s all that matters. I wanted him. It took a long time: little by little I broke down his reserve. I felt his sympathy, his interest in me, change to tenderness. His voice was like a diffident caress. I longed to throw myself into his arms; to be his utterly; to give him love as no other woman had ever given it him; and, then, within a couple of months he had become as every other man. They are all much the same when the glamour has passed. And, of course, I began to mean more to him every day; an endless flow of telephone calls and special messengers; desperate, imploring notes. He must see me. He couldn’t exist away from me. And all the time I was growing more and more tired of him; he exasperated me with his quiet voice and woman’s hands. I began to hate all the things about him that I had loved before: his weakness, his diffidence, his self-pity, his ceaseless references to his wife: how she bullied him; how he was dependent on her; how it would break his father’s heart were he to leave her; how he could not bear to leave his child. I grew as impatient of those two words “my wife,” as once I had of that proprietary “my husband.” I wanted to scream at him, “For God’s sake, be a man!” I tried to make him jealous by talking to him of earlier love affairs. No one, not even you, Gerald, knows as much about me as he does. I’ve told him all those little intimate things that would have made any other man hate me or hate himself for loving me. But nothing moved him.
“‘I told him once of a quarrel that I had had with Roger. Roger had threatened to leave me, never to see me again. I said nothing. I stood straight up in front of him, looking him in the eyes; then, with a sudden sweep, I tore away from my arms the soft silk of my evening dress, and stood there, my shoulders bare, the white skin stained with the bruises of our love-making. We stood there, we said nothing, but we read in our eyes those things of memory for which there are no words. Then he took a quick step forward, caught me in his arms and kissed away our quarrel. I told Paul that. “There was a man,” I said to him. I flung the words at him as one flings a glove in a challenge. But he didn’t hit back. He said none of the things he might have said. He just took my hand. “Margaret,” he said, “I can’t love you in that way; each man has his own way of loving, and that isn’t mine. But in my own way I love you more than the others have. Do believe that, my dear, I do—I do!”’
“‘What was I to do, Gerald—what was I to say? I was moved. What woman wouldn’t be? I felt a pig, and kissed him, and let him make love to me. That’s the worst of those people—they get under one’s guard; they disarm one; one can’t hurt them; they are too weak; and, oh! Gerald, it’s more than I can stand. It’s hateful to have a coward for a lover: I’d much rather be a strong man’s toy. I keep saying to myself: “Margaret, my girl, you’ve got to make an end of this.” But I can’t. He always gets round me in the end. You can only fight what’s stronger than yourself.’
“She paused, out of breath, flushed, bright-eyed, amazingly attractive. Then, in a sudden, chastened voice, ‘Oh! Gerald, Gerald, why don’t people keep pace with one another in love, why don’t they fall in love at the same time and fall out of love at the same time? Why must it be a race in which everyone is handicapped, and starts at different times and different paces, when it is all a chasing and a being chased, and there is only a few yards of running side by side together?’
“Never before, I think, had she so completely revealed herself to me, or it would, perhaps, be more true to say never before had she revealed that particular facet of her personality. She had become suddenly a woman wistful and self-doubting, frightened of her mortality, saddened by the contrast between the dream and the actuality, by the passage of good things.
“I sat watching her, held silent in the spell of her beauty, wondering what next would come, when, from below, came the faint ring of an electric bell, the sound of an opening door, the soft stir of feet on Axminster.