"I suppose you haven't ever heard his name along with hers?"
"'Hers'? D'you mean Dinah's? No, by God—nor any other man's! If I did——Out with it. What are you saying, Jane?"
To hear him swear made Jerry wonder, for John had never sworn in the past. The woodman, regarding him very anxiously, now perceived how his face and the tone of his voice had altered. That such phenomena were visible to Jerry's intelligence argued their magnitude.
"She went for a long walk with him a few weeks back," said Jane. "She made no secret about it. He took her to see a stone out Hey Tor way."
"Did he? And why didn't you tell me?"
"I was going to; but I waited to see if there was more to tell. There is no more than that—not yet."
Johnny fell silent. His mind moved quickly. Love had already begun to suffer a change, half chemical, half psychological, that would presently poison it. Such passion as he had endured for Dinah would not fade and suffer extinction in Johnny's order of mind. He came to the ordeal untried and untested. He had till now been a thief of virtue, in the sense that he was good and orderly, peace-loving and obedient by native bent and instinct. He fitted into the order of things as they were and approved them. Nothing had ever happened to make him unrestful, to incite class prejudice, or to foment discontent with his station. He had looked without sympathy on the struggle for better industrial conditions; he had despised doubt in the matter of religion. He was born good: his mother had said the Old Adam must surely be left out of him. But now came the shock, and pride prevented John from admitting his failure to anybody else; pride, indeed, had assured him that such a man as he must have his own way in the end.
He debated the past, and his self-respect tottered before his thoughts, as a stout boulder shakes upon its foundations at the impact of a flood. He stared at Jane and Jerry unseeing, and they marked the blood leap up into his face and his eyes grow bright. This idea was new to him. What Jane said acted perilously, for it excused to himself his gathering temper under defeat and justified his wrath in his own sight.
"Be careful," he said. "D'you know all it means you'm saying, Jane?"
"For God's sake, unsay it, Jenny," urged her sweetheart. "You can't know—nobody can know."