“I think you understand mine.” She had said it. She had been seized with a sudden wild desire to make an end of it, to put it into words. The overweight of daring which nature had given her drew her on.
“Well, if I do, then,” answered Paul, “why don’t you want to please me?”
She turned her head away, suffocated by his calm acceptance of her avowal. “It would be of no use. And I want to make one woman happy; so few women are happy!”
“Do you call it happy to have Ferdie knocking her about?”
“She does.”
“And knocking about Jack, too?”
“I shall be there, I can take care of Jack.”
“I see I can do nothing with you. You have lost your senses!”
He went back to Cicely. “Ferdie has his faults, Cicely, as we both know; but you have yours too, you make yourself out too important. How many other women do you think he has cared for?”
“Before he saw me, five hundred, if you like; five thousand.”