He said he was going to walk home, and Lionel offered to accompany him part of the way.
“What do you think of her now?” he asked, anxiously, as they came out into the dusky street.
“A very nice little woman,” Horace answered. He could not force himself to say more. Pain and disappointment seized him by the throat. Lionel in that dingy flat, with that sallow, complacent woman who talked about growing vegetables in the suburbs. The sort of woman inevitably to grow fat. Shifty, too. Horace had had his experiences with women, there was a quality in this one not at all unknown to him.
Lionel too fell silent. He was wondering just what he thought himself. He went back to the beginning; he was able to remember everything, every detail, and still it wasn’t clear—
II
It wasn’t clear how he, the lover of Frankie, could have so conducted himself with Minnie. And why he felt so little remorse or shame or even regret?
He fancied that it must be because he loved Minnie. In spite of thirty years in the world, he was still so sentimental, so ignorant, that he had no comprehension of the base and sensual passion which had overwhelmed him. Minnie was his wife; a fellow couldn’t feel that way toward his wife. He was obliged to call it love. He couldn’t imagine that Minnie, so serious and sensible, Minnie who didn’t even take much interest in how she dressed her hair, could be just as carnal, as gross, as any scarlet woman. He couldn’t see, in all her endless plans for his “comfort,” the hidden snare, the net that bound him closer. She thought of his food, his tobacco, that his bed should be comfortable, his linen mended. This ignorant and unbeautiful Circe was not content with his metamorphosis; the wretched swine must be taught to be more swinish.
He thought he was happy. She was very loving, very cheerful, inordinately devoted. There was a sort of joy in coming back to a home of his own after a day’s futile search for something to do, no matter if the home were a furnished flat daily growing dirtier and dustier. He enjoyed the bright welcome and her soothing interest in his adventures. She always agreed with him, always approved of what he did.
Her condition touched him, too. He felt that she had given up everything for him, had sacrificed herself with a splendid ardour. He believed that he should, and did, admire all this, that there was something noble in that greedy violence, that reckless seizure of what she desired.
She had been aware of the great advantage she had obtained from not being married. It made her more pathetic, more helpless. He had suggested it more than once, but she only cried and said she was ashamed.