“Sorry,” said Wilmington to Joan, and leant forward over his folded arms and collected his thoughts with his eyes on the flowers before them.
“It’s like this, Joan. Peter isn’t where we are. I—I’m very definite and clear about my love-making. I fell in love with you, and I’ve never met any other woman I’d give three minutes of my life to. You’ve just got me. As if I were the palm of your hand. I wish I were. And—oh! what’s the good of shutting my eyes?—Peter has you. You’ve been thinking of Peter half the time we’ve been together. It’s true, Joan. You’ve grown up in love. Buh! But Peter, you’ve got to understand, isn’t in love. He doesn’t know what love means. Perhaps he never will. Love with you and me is a thing of flesh and bone. He takes it like some skin disease. He’s been spoilt. He’s so damned easy and good-looking. He was got hold of. I——”
Wilmington flushed for a moment. “I’m a chaste man, Joan. It’s a rare thing. Among our sort. But Peter—— Loving a woman body and soul means nothing to him. He thinks love-making is a kind of amusement—— Casual amusement. Any woman who isn’t repulsive. You know, Joan, that’s not the natural way. The natural way is love of soul and body. He’s been perverted. But in this crowded world—like a monkey’s cage ... artificially heated ... the young men get made miscellaneous.... Lots of the girls even are miscellaneous....”
He considered the word. “Miscellaneous? Promiscuous, I mean.... It hasn’t happened to us. To you and me, I mean. I’m unattractive somehow. You’re fastidious. He’s neither. He takes the thing that offers. To grave people sex is a sacrament, something—so solemn and beautiful——”
The tears stood in his eyes. “If I go on,” he said.... “I can’t go on....”
For a time he said no more, and pulled his unconsumed cigarette to pieces over the ash-tray with trembling fingers. “That’s all,” he said at last.
“All this is—rather true,” said Joan. “But——!”
“What does it lead up to?”
“Yes.”
“It means Peter’s the ordinary male animal. Under modern conditions. Lazy. Affectionate and all that, but not a scrap of emotion or love—yet anyhow. Not what you and I know as love. You may dress it up as you like, but the fact is that the woman has to make love to him. That’s all. Hetty has made love to him. He has never made love to anybody—except as a sort of cheerful way of talking, and perhaps he never, never will.... He respects you too much to make love to you.... But he’d hate the idea of any one else—making love to you.... It’s an idea—— It’s outside of his conception of you.... He’ll never think of it for himself.”