“I know it—and because. He won’t do without the others—but he can’t do without me. Look here, you blooming Artemis, I justify myself to you just this once and never again. Understand this. That little rotter is my ... completion, if you like; the answer to my special quantity of X. It’s a pity, I’m sure, that it didn’t happen to be someone grand and distinguished and austere, who’d spend all day long renouncing me, and all night long being nobly glad that he did so. Can you see Theo being glad he’s renounced anyone, ever?” again the swift joyous grin.... Antonia could not help returning it.
“Theo’s got a wife, I believe?”
“Oh, curse her, yes. A Spanish Catholic who won’t divorce him. A dark flashing thing who looks all passion and Carmen and castanets. She’s no earthly use to him.”
“Gillian, you’re a thoroughly immoral creature!”
“I’m not going to be one of a crowd. ’Tisn’t good for the self-respect. And it isn’t good for Theo—Oh, I’ve no illusions about my young man.... It amounts to this—I’m fed up with the type of woman who can’t sling sex out of her mind. The mind isn’t the proper place for sex. I want my mind for my work. Enforced virginity, not chosen, mind you, but enforced, is unbalancing; it hangs about and takes up more room than it ought to.... My work has got to come to fruition sooner or later ... and all this has got to be cleared out of the way, somehow, first. Theo is thoroughly unsuitable, he’s younger than I am, he’s married, he’s fast and horrid ... granted!—but Theo is a factor that can’t be slung out. So he’s got to stay—with as little fuss as possible. I thought about it all hard, and when last night I’d decided, I packed, and I came. Poor old Theo ...” and she chuckled softly as at some memory of the preceding evening—but her brows were contracted with pain.
“Wasn’t he terrifically glad, at least?”
“Oh—glad enough. But just last night ... it was—awkward. I ought to have ’phoned him beforehand—See? Antonia, you’re shrinking like bad material in the wash!”
“Bad material perhaps—but not in the wash ... at the present moment!”
“Cue for a wince from the fallen woman! Frankly, are my affairs as unsavoury as all that?”