“Of course you didn’t. But wasn’t it clear that before you married, she loved you as a boy loves, with some tempestuous desire of possession?”
“But she’s got me,” said he. “It isn’t as if there were anyone else.”
“I know that, and she knows that for certain. It’s nothing, of that kind that revolts her.”
“Revolts?” asked he.
“Oh, my dear, short of that, wouldn’t she have told you what she has known for two days, and suspected long before? But you would be quite wrong to think that she loves you any less. What you don’t see, especially, beyond that, is that Silvia has become a perfectly changed person. She keeps her splendour. Keeps it? Good heavens! I should think she did. But what she learned the other day quite changes her. She has become a woman, and she must have not just a man to love, but a man to love her. You’ve hinted that she’s on the way to get one. That’s the sum of the consolation I’ve got for you.”
Nellie, having determined, having chosen, was being magnificent just then, and all the time the Dryad within her scolded and derided her.
“You fool, you conventionalist,” the Dryad shrieked. “He might be yours; he’s as weak as water, and vain, vain! You want him: wait a few months and see how you want him! Idiot!”
Nellie heard all that as plainly as she heard the whistle of the wind in the chimney.
“It won’t be easy,” she said. “You’ve got to get out of yourself, Peter, a thing, by the way, that I’ve never succeeded in doing. And when you’ve got out of yourself you’ve got to convince her that you’ve got into herself. I wouldn’t bet on your chance.”
“Have I been a brute?” asked he.