She sighed as she might have done with a child who was trying her.
"We've both got to think it out," she said. "I'm glad now that it's happened. It ends all that falseness. I'll talk it over with you as long as you like."
She moved forward; he stood aside and she left the room. He sat down on the red sofa and stayed there, until late into the night, trying to puzzle out his position. Sometimes, in his distress, he spoke to himself aloud.
"That's what it is ... the world's changed. Entirely changed. Women don't want men any more. But that's awful! They can't get on alone. Nancy can't get on alone. She thinks she can, but she can't. She gets taken in by the first silly boy that comes along. I believe she cares for Harry more than she said.... She must.... She wouldn't have let him kiss her...."
And that was the first thing that he found in the voyage of mental discovery that he was now making—namely, that he couldn't be jealous of Harry if he tried. His anger had left him. There was nothing in that. He knew it absolutely. Nancy had spoken the truth when she had said that she didn't care for that boy any more than for a dog or a baby. No, he felt no jealousy, and now, oddly enough, no anger.
But he did not know how he felt. He did not know what to do. Again he saw the golden balls tossing in the air above him, and there was she, alluring, glittering, tumbling, escaping.
He thought, with a smile of contempt, of his conquest of Hortons. That was no achievement. But this, this new woman, this new Nancy, here was something.
He slept that night on the sofa, taking off his coat and wrapping a rug around him. He slept the slumber of the dead.
Next day they had only one talk together, and that a very little one. Suddenly after breakfast she turned round upon him.