“Ooh!” he cried, then recognised his assailant. “Mr. Folyat!”
Francis breathed heavily and raised his stick again. To feel Bennett’s flesh yielding under his blow had given him an intense and peculiar satisfaction, a pleasure so unwonted that his senses craved more of it. His mind however had shot ahead of his mood and he dropped his stick and said:
“I beg your pardon. . . . That was not what I intended. My intentions are frequently belied by my performances. . . . Did I hurt you?”
“You did.” Bennett rubbed his thigh ruefully, then stooped and restored his stick to Francis. They stared at each other by the light of the lamp-post and at length Francis said:
“Annette is telling her mother. She has just told me. I propose to stay with you until she comes. We should—a—we should know each other better.”
“I told my mother yesterday, I left her house last night.”
“It was foolish of you to quarrel.”
Francis laid his hand on Bennett’s arm and turned with him down the street. They passed up and down on the side opposite the house, Francis explaining as best he could how and why he had come to strike his son-in-law. He was very frank, and pointed out those elements of Bennett’s conduct of which, as a gentleman, he could not approve, but made it clear that they should not stand in the way of a friendly acceptance of the inevitable.
Upstairs in the drawing-room Annette had found her mother alone with Serge. Mrs. Folyat was knitting a never-ending woollen vest, and Serge was unwinding a skein for her round the back of a chair. Annette told her news. Serge went on winding the skein. Mrs. Folyat dropped her knitting, took off her spectacles, put them on again, pushed them up to her forehead and looked Annette up and down. Then very slowly, as though she was groping for her words, she said: