Another false move checked; another false relationship ended.
He slept that night at the Denmark, lied and enjoyed lying to Mr. Sherman, saying that his wife was away and he had lost his key and could not wake the servants. He sat in his room at the Denmark feeling at peace and very confident, until his father came. Then he sat with the boon company, told them one or two stories that he was able to remember from the stock of the Common Room, told them heavily, dully, so that they gained in comicality and roused laughter. His father seemed to him rather contemptible. He enjoyed his own old jests as much as his audience, and that was displeasing to René’s fastidious mood.
He walked home with his father, who was loquacious and tiresome. At last René interrupted him:
“Father, do you mind not talking while I tell you what I have to tell? I have left Linda. I can’t tell you why without being unjust to her, because I can’t see clearly enough. She said it was finished, and so it is. I am extraordinarily happy. I never was so happy in my life. I have, in effect, told Professor Smallman to go to hell, and I shall do the same with anybody else who tries to interfere. I don’t know what I am going to do, and I don’t care. It is quite clear to me that there is no room for Linda and me in the same set of people. They talk so. I have no intention of continuing the life I have been leading. Everything I have ever done, as long as I can remember, has been because someone else wanted me to do it, or because someone else thought I could. It has been surprising and delightful, but never satisfying. George has made a better thing out of his life than I. At least he has done what he wanted to do, though you and I may not think much of it. I don’t think I can see my mother. I would dearly like to, but I could not bear it. She would make me feel something, and at present I feel nothing at all. But I can remember her face against mine, and her voice saying: ‘I have always tried to do my best.’ Good night. Give her my love.”
He turned on his heel, but his father caught him by the arm:
“Don’t be a young lunatic,” he said. “You can’t go like that.”
“I can,” answered René, puzzled that anybody should deny what was actually happening. “I can. Don’t you see that I am going?”
“Look here, I’m a bit of a queer one myself, but do you know what you are doing?”
“For the first time in my life,” said René, “I know what I am doing. And I like it so immensely that I am going on doing it. You can’t stop me. Nothing can stop me. You said yourself that we live in a world of women, and I want to make the best of it.”