"But sometimes," said Alston, "it is beauty."
He knew what road Jeff was on. Jeff was speaking out his plain thought and at the same time assuring them both that they needn't, either of them, be submerged by Esther, because real beauty wasn't in her. If they ate the fruit of her witchery it would be to their own damnation, and they would deserve what they got.
"Yes," said Jeff, "sometimes it is real beauty. But even then the thing that grows out of sex madness is better than the madness itself. Sometimes I think the only time some fellows feel alive is when they're in love. That's what's given us such an idea of it. But when I think of a man and woman planking along together through the dust and mud—good comrades, you know—that's the best of it."
"Of course," said Alston stiffly, "that's the point. That's what it leads to."
"Ah, but with some of them, you'd never get there; they're not made for wives—or sisters—or mothers. And no man, if he saw what he was going into, would dance their dance. He wouldn't choose it, that is, when he thinks back to it."
Alston took out his match-box, and felt his fingers quiver on it. He was enraged with himself for minding. This was the warning then. He was told, almost in exact words, not to covet his neighbour's wife, cautioned like a boy not to snatch at forbidden fruit, and even, unthinkably, that the fruit was, besides not being his, rotten. And at his heart he knew the warning was fair and true. Esther had dealt a blow to his fastidious idealities. Her deceit had slain something. She had not so much betrayed it to him by facts, for facts he could, if passion were strong enough, put aside. But his inner heart searching for her heart, like a hand seeking a beloved hand, had found an emptiness. He was so bruised now that he wanted to hit out and hurt Jeff, perhaps, at least force him to naked warfare.
"You want me to believe," he said, "that—Esther—" he stumbled over the word, but at such a pass he would not speak of her more decorously—"years ago took Madame Beattie's necklace."
Jeff was watching the boys across the flats, critically and with a real interest.
"She did," he said.
Alston bolstered himself with a fictitious anger.