"You know!"
He continued to gaze straight into her eyes:
"Oh, of course one knows all about Breakfast Duchemin!" he said. "He was one of Ruskin's road-builders. He was said to be the most Ruskin-like of them all!"
Mrs. Duchemin cried out: "Oh!" Fragments of the worst stories that in his worst moods her husband had told her of his old preceptor went through her mind. She imagined that the shameful parts of her intimate life must be known to this nebulous monster. For Tietjens, turned sideways and facing her, had seemed to grow monstrous, with undefined outlines. He was the male, threatening, clumsily odious and external! She felt herself say to herself: "I will do you an injury, if ever——" For already she had felt herself swaying the preferences, the thoughts and the future of the man on her other side. He was the male, tender, in-fitting; the complement of the harmony, the meat for consumption, like the sweet pulp of figs. . . . It was inevitable; it was essential to the nature of her relationship with her husband that Mrs. Duchemin should have these feelings. . . .
She heard, almost without emotion, so great was her disturbance, from behind her back the dreaded, high, rasping tones:
"Post coitum tristis! Ha! Ha! That's what it is?" The voice repeated the words and added sardonically: "You know what that means?" But the problem of her husband had become secondary; the real problem was: "What was this monstrous and hateful man going to say of her to his friend, when, for long hours, they were away?"
He was still gazing into her eyes. He said nonchalantly, rather low:
"I wouldn't look round if I were you. Vincent Macmaster is quite up to dealing with the situation."
His voice had the familiarity of an elder brother's. And at once Mrs. Duchemin knew—that he knew that already close ties were developing between herself and Macmaster. He was speaking as a man speaks in emergencies to the mistress of his dearest friend. He was then one of those formidable and to be feared males who possess the gift of right intuitions. . . .
Tietjens said: "You heard!"