"Mary," said Jack, "come out and listen to the night-bird."
She started slightly, glanced at him, then at Mr. George.
"Go with him a minute, if you want to," said the old man.
Rather unwillingly she went out of the door with Jack. They crossed the yard in silence, towards the stable. She hesitated outside, in the thin moonlight.
"Come to the stable with me," he said, his heart beating thick, and his voice strange and low.
"Oh Jack!" she cried, with a funny little lament; "you're married to Monica! I can't! You're Monica's."
"Am I?" he said. "Monica's mine, if you like, but why am I all hers? She's certainly not all mine. She belongs chiefly to her babies just now. Why shouldn't she? She's their red earth. But I'm not going to shut my eyes. Neither am I going to play the mild Saint Joseph. I don't feel that way. At the present moment I'm not Monica's, any more than she is mine. So what's the good of your telling me? I shall love her again, when she is free. Everything in season, even wives. Now I love you again, after having never thought of it for a long while. But it was always slumbering inside me, just as Monica is asleep inside me this minute. The sun goes, and the moon comes. A man isn't made up of only one thread. What's the good of keeping your virginity! It's really mine. Come with me to the stable, and then afterwards come and live in the North-West, in one of my houses, and have your children there, and animals or whatever you want."
"Oh God!" cried Mary. "You must really be mad. You don't love me, you can't, you must love Monica. Oh God, why do you torture me!"
"I don't torture you. Come to the stable with me. I love you too."
"But you love Monica."