He turned his eyes to her. She was looking at him, smiling.
“But you don’t understand, you can’t?”
“Yes, I understand.”
Then something savage in him began to stir. He caught her hands in his fiercely, roughly.
“No, you can’t. I tell you I don’t love you at all. Not as a decent man loves a decent woman. A few weeks ago I thought that I had found my soul. I saw things differently; it was a new world, and I thought that you had shown it me. But it was not really you at all. It isn’t I that you care for, it’s your husband, and we are both being led by the devil—here—now!”
“Ah!” she said, drawing back a little. “I thought you were braver than that. You do care for all the old conventional things after all, ‘the sanctity of the marriage tie,’ and all the rest of it. I thought that we had settled all that.”
“No,” he answered her. “It isn’t the conventions that I care for, but it’s our souls, yours and mine. If we loved each other it would be a different thing; but I’ve found out there’s something more than thrilling at another person’s touch—that isn’t enough. I don’t love you; we must end it.”
“No!” She had knelt down by his chair and had suddenly taken both his hands in hers, and was kissing them again and again. “No, Jim, we must have to-night. Never mind about the rest. I want you—now. Take me.”
Her arms were about him. Her head was on his chest. Her fascination began to steal about him again. His blood began to riot. After all, what were all these casuistries, this talk about the soul? Anyone could talk, it was living that mattered. He began to press her hands; his head was swimming.
Then suddenly a curious thing happened. The room seemed to disappear. Mrs. Maradick was sitting on the edge of her bed looking at him. He could see the pathetic bend of her head as she looked at him. He felt once again, as he had felt in Morelli’s room, as though there were devils about him.