His voice changed. It took on the unmistakable note that is immediately followed by love-making.
‘I—think I’ll go and lie down,’ said Mrs. Luke faintly, recognising the note, and feeling she could bear no more of anything that night. ‘I—I really think I must. My head——’
She struggled to get up.
He helped her. He helped her by laying hold of both her wrists, and drawing her upwards and towards him.
‘Head, eh?’ he said, a gleam in his eyes.
‘How kind, how kind——’ she murmured distractedly, finding herself on her feet and very close to Mr. Thorpe, who still held her wrists.
She wanted her letter. She looked about helplessly for her letter, keeping her head as far away from him as she could. There was her letter—on the table—she wanted to snatch it up—to get away as quickly as possible—to hide in her bedroom—and her wrists were being held, and she couldn’t move.
‘Kind, eh? Kind, you call it?’ said Mr. Thorpe through his teeth. ‘I can be kinder than that.’ And he put his arms round her, and drew her vigorously to his chest.
‘This in exchange for Jocelyn,’ drifted through Mrs. Luke’s wretched and resisting mind.
But, even through her wretchedness and resistance she felt there was something rock-like, something solid and fixed, about Mr. Thorpe’s chest, to which in the present catastrophe, with the swirling waters of bitterest disappointment raging round her feet, it might be well to cling.