She walked holding his arm, silent with exasperation and perplexity and pain. He took the uncertain steps of a blind man, because his mind was blind with weeping.
“Shall we go home? Shall we have a taxi?” she said.
He could pay no attention. Very flustered, very agitated, she signalled indefinitely to a taxi-cab that was going slowly by. The driver saluted and drew up. She opened the door and pushed Skrebensky in, then took her own place. Her face was uplifted, the mouth closed down, she looked hard and cold and ashamed. She winced as the driver’s dark red face was thrust round upon her, a full-blooded, animal face with black eyebrows and a thick, short-cut moustache.
“Where to, lady?” he said, his white teeth showing. Again for a moment she was flustered.
“Forty, Rutland Square,” she said.
He touched his cap and stolidly set the car in motion. He seemed to have a league with her to ignore Skrebensky.
The latter sat as if trapped within the taxi-cab, his face still working, whilst occasionally he made quick slight movements of the head, to shake away his tears. He never moved his hands. She could not bear to look at him. She sat with face uplifted and averted to the window.
At length, when she had regained some control over herself, she turned again to him. He was much quieter. His face was wet, and twitched occasionally, his hands still lay motionless. But his eyes were quite still, like a washed sky after rain, full of a wan light, and quite steady, almost ghost-like.
A pain flamed in her womb, for him.
“I didn’t think I should hurt you,” she said, laying her hand very lightly, tentatively, on his arm. “The words came without my knowing. They didn’t mean anything, really.”