“Oh, if you’d rather!” (... Odd things, women!)
It was the last straw when Art, the Italian jade, plucked at Justin’s sleeve, whispering that two were company ... and Justin went out to Pavia all by himself. Mrs. Cloud had a headache. Laura, because she felt like it, spent her afternoon at the Campo Santo, and, among tombs, made up her mind to have it out with Justin.
She had a certain desperate directness in emergencies that might easily have been mistaken for courage. She had quite the average capacity of a woman for subterfuge, but, linked with it, a curious dread of being spared in her turn. She could face an ugly truth, but she could not endure it tailored. She must know where she stood. She must know where she stood with Justin, risking snubs; though she dreaded being snubbed as only soft-shelled youth can. She must know what she done wrong. She was quite sure that, whatever it was, it was her fault, because if it were not her fault, it would be Justin’s.... And that was impossible.... She did not pretend to understand Justin, she knew she was not clever enough for that, but at least she realized that he had no faults.... She was not quite a fool.... There were certain inexplicabilities, of course, but they were not her presumptuous business....
One does not criticize one’s god, or only when one has ceased to believe in him. But God is not God when one ceases to believe in Him.
She attacked Justin the next evening, choosing the wrong moment, when he was tired, ready for a pipe and a book rather than argument. But he had been kind to her at dinner and she had made him laugh. (At least she could always make him laugh.) She thought his mood could not change in half an hour.
But it had changed. He was absorbed, if not somnolent: had not a glance to spare as she hesitated in front of him.
“Justin? Aren’t you coming out again?”
He shook his head.
She looked out of the window. The moon glimmered in the white sky, thin and flat and unsubstantial, like a peeled honesty leaf: and, below, the square was glamorous. The cathedral that rose out of it, like June woods turned to stone, quivered in the warm dusk as on the verge of disenchantment. The dots of lamp-light increased like buttercups all opening at once, and among them people moved in vague masses. A shrill of voices and laughter floated upwards.
Laura turned to Justin, straining his eyes over Baedeker’s Northern Italy. The sight of the crowd had stirred her, made her want to go down into it, just as the sight of the sea makes you want to bathe.