"Of course I know I can't please you!" she said. She could not see his face and it was almost unbearable not to know whether he was smiling or not. She felt him going farther away from her because of her mother. It was cruel. Now whenever he did not want to touch her he said she was sick. She hugged her sickness but she hated him for talking about it.
"Now, Winnie!" He was facing her. "I've tried to efface myself as much as possible as regards your parents. If you weren't nervous and ill you would realize that the time has passed for reproaching me."
"Forgive me."
"There's nothing to forgive."
She was irritated because he would not forgive her, but she went to him and laid her head against his coat. A tremor shot through him when she touched him and she did not know whether she was agitating him in a manner complimentary to herself or not. But something in her hardened. He had no right to conceal himself.
"Oh, Laurie!" They were still against each other. She felt him waiting for her to lift her head. When people married they became one. She was conscious of feeling cruel, but it seemed to her that she had nothing to reproach herself with. "I cut myself on my manicure scissors today. You mustn't be stern with me." He could not help thinking what a common deceitful-looking little hand she had. He was sorry for her.
"What a tragedy!" His lips rested on the finger an instant without giving themselves. They quivered a little. An emotion that was unpleasant and at the same time exhilarating swept through her and seemed to lift her from her feet. She thought sadly and complacently of how much she had suffered for him already.
"Where is May?" Laurence asked suddenly. He felt that in kissing Winnie's finger he had committed himself to some unknown almost sinister thing. He resented the stupidity of his thought.
"Downstairs, I suppose." When he talked of May, Winnie was glad to leave him. She felt as if he were lying to her.
Laurence moved toward the door, his gross body large in the darkening room. Winnie seemed to know each detail of him as he passed into the dark hall. It was painful to know him so distinctly. She tried in vain to revive the blurred apperception of him which she had had in earlier days. She wanted people to see him as she had seen him then. His rocking walk humiliated her and when visitors were present she tried to inveigle him into sitting in an armchair where his heavy handsome profile would be silhouetted against the light, his awkward body at rest.