“Richard,” said she, looking up, “if you meet George again—”
“Don’t be a bit alarmed. I will do nothing to him except to cut him. He has run away; that closes the affair entirely. A man can only be really angry with a man.”
“Richard,” said she, now half tearfully, “I’m going to say something I want to say. Men don’t understand women. I’m fond of George. Men are always talking about love, and so are novels. I never loved George that way. I don’t think I ever loved any one really in that way, but I have an affection for George; I suppose that is the best name to give it. I know he’s ugly, I know he’s a lot of things he ought not to be, yet I feel he belongs to me.
“It’s the sort of feeling one has for an—for an animal. I’m just telling you what I feel. An animal may be terribly ugly, yet one may love it. George has been very good to me, and he has grown into my life; that is the only way I can express it.
“Do you know, Dick, when you have your face very close to another person’s face you cannot tell what they are like. Well, it’s just the same with marriage. After people have been married some time they don’t see each other as they saw each other before; they have lost their identity—each is part of the other. And, Dick, I know George has been wicked, but ought we not to remember, the day before yesterday—”
“Yes,” he said; “the day before yesterday I kissed you.”
“It was a moment of weakness on my part,” continued Jane. “We are all very weak and wicked, but I have always been faithful to my husband—I should say, to myself. It is strange to talk like this.”
“The whole affair is closed,” he said. “Let us wipe the slate clean and begin again.”
Sitting opposite to her here in the morning light he was a very different person from the man wandering about Arita yesterday, pursued by her image.
The course of a great passion like his is not a high level line. If a man were to live through such a phase of existence at Italian opera heights he would be mad or dead in a very few days.