It was surely the most beautiful moment of his life. He was touched almost to tears by her perfect trust in him. All her dewy freshness, all her passionate beauty, all her vital young womanhood, was his for the taking. He had but to say: ‘Come with me now.... Como!’ and she would come. But was it wise to act so hastily? He plunged into a delirium of pleasurable emotion only to emerge with that question in his mind. With his lips clinging to hers he asked it. Was it wise? They would go away sooner or later: that was inevitable; but to go now, would it not be precipitate? To take a woman from her husband was a serious matter, involving unexampled responsibility. He would be bound to her more surely than by any legal marriage. And the scandal, the hateful publicity, the dragging of one’s name through the divorce courts—it was all so intolerable to a sensitive man. He would incur the enmity of many people, and he would lose Elsie. Elsie would divorce him, would perhaps forget him and re-marry....
He released Marion from that mad embrace.
‘What am I to do, darling?’ she repeated.
‘Let me think, dear,’ he said, stroking his troubled brow. ‘Let me think. Above all we must listen to the voice of reason. So much depends on this. Don’t you think it would be best for you to go back? Only for a while, of course.’
She stared as though he had spoken in an unknown tongue. ‘Go back? Go back to John?’
‘Only for a few weeks, darling, until I can see daylight, and make all arrangements.’
She stepped back from him a few paces, as if to survey him the better. Her eyes had the surprised and stricken look of a child unaccountably hurt.
‘I don’t think I understand. Are you telling me to go back to my husband? You, are you telling me that?’
‘My darling girl, don’t you see....’
‘Do you understand what that means? Go back to my husband who, when I last saw him, was raging like a beast. Go back to him and, if he doesn’t kill me, be his woman.’