“You aren't going back without tying her up, Poff? You ought to stop every farthing of her money—every farthing. It's your duty.”
“I can't do things like that.”
“But have you no Shame? To let that sort of thing go on!”
“If I don't feel the Shame of it— And I don't.”
“And that money—. I got you that money, Poff! It was my money.”
Benham stared at her perplexed. “What am I to do?” he asked.
“Cut her off, you silly boy! Tie her up! Pay her through a solicitor. Say that if she sees him ONCE again—”
He reflected. “No,” he said at last.
“Poff!” she cried, “every time I see you, you are more and more like your father. You're going off—just as he did. That baffled, MULISH look—priggish—solemn! Oh! it's strange the stuff a poor woman has to bring into the world. But you'll do nothing. I know you'll do nothing. You'll stand everything. You—you Cuckold! And she'll drive by me, she'll pass me in theatres with the money that ought to have been mine! Oh! Oh!”
She dabbed her handkerchief from one swimming eye to the other. But she went on talking. Faster and faster, less and less coherently; more and more wildly abusive. Presently in a brief pause of the storm Benham sighed profoundly....