When Dr. Davencott and his wife had gone Lee sank back into his chair, more disorganized by his culminating discovery than by any of the extraordinary conditions that had preceded it. Its quality of the unexpected, however, wasn't enough to account for the profound effect on him; that was buried in the secret of instinctive recognitions. “Well, the thing for me to do is to go to bed,” he said aloud, but it was no more than an unconvinced mutter, addressed to the indeterminate region of his feet. Savina Grove was standing by the door, in the place, the position, in which she had said good-bye to the Davencotts. Her flamboyant tulle skirt, contrasted with the tightly-fitting upper part of her dress, gave her, now, in the sombre crowded furnishings, the rich draped brocades, of the room, an aspect of mid-Victorian unreality.
“It is for me, as well,” she agreed, but so long after he had spoken that the connection between their remarks was almost lost. However, neither of them made a movement to leave the drawing-room, Savina Grove returned slowly to her chair. “No one, I think, has ever found it out like that.” Her remark was without intelligible preliminary, but he grasped her meaning at once. “How you happened to stir it in me I have no idea—” she stopped and looked at him intently. “A terrible accident! I would have done anything, gone any distance, to avoid it. I am unable, with you, to pretend—that's curious—and that in itself gives me a feeling of helplessness. All sorts of impossible things are coming into my head to say to you. I mustn't.” Her voice was brittle.
“There is no need for you to say what would make you miserable,” he replied. “I am not in a position to question you; at the same time I can't pretend—perhaps the safest thing of all—not to understand what, entirely against your will, I've seen. I am very much, very naturally, disturbed by it; but you have nothing to worry about.”
“You say that because you don't know, you can't possibly think, what goes on here,” she pressed a hand to her breast. “Why,” her words were blurred in a mounting panic, “I have lost my sense of shame with you. It's gone.” She gazed despairingly around as if she expected to see that restraining quality embodied and recoverable in the propriety of the room. “I'm frightened,” she gasped. Lee rose instinctively, and moved toward her with a gesture of reassurance, but she cried, “Don't! don't! don't!” three times with an increasing dread. He went back to his chair.
“Now I have to—I want to—tell you about it,” she went on rapidly; “it has always been in me as long as I can remember, when I was hardly more than a child sitting alone; and I have always been afraid and ashamed. The nicest thing to call it is feeling; but in such an insane degree; at night it comes over me in waves, like a warm sea. I wanted and wanted love. But not in the little amounts that satisfied the others—the men and girls together. I couldn't do any of the small things they did with safety: this—this feeling would sweep up over me and I'd think I was going to die.
“All that I had inherited and been told made me sure that I was horridly immodest; I wouldn't, if it could be helped at all, let anyone see inside me; I couldn't have men touch me; and whenever I began to like one I ran. It was disgusting, I was brought up to believe; I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was a bad girl; and I struggled, oh, for days on end, to keep it hidden.”
It was strange, Lee told himself, that marriage, the birth of her son, hadn't made her more happily normal; and, as if she had perceived his thoughts, she added, “Even from William. It would have shocked him, sickened him, really, more than the rest. He had to dominate me, be masculine, and I had to be modest, pursued—when I could have killed him.” Her emotion swept her to her feet. “But I was, he thought, proper; although it tore and beat and pounded me till I was more often ill than not. Young William nearly grew up and, because of him, I was sure I had controlled it; but he was killed. Still, in five or six years it would be over; and now you, I—”
“Nothing has happened,” he heavily reiterated; “nothing has or can happen. We are neither of us completely young; and, as you say, in a few years all will be over, solved. We are both, it seems, happily married.” She interrupted him to cry, “Is anyone happily married? Don't we fool ourselves and doesn't life fool us?”
“It's the best course in a bad affair.”
“Bah!” She was infuriated at him. “You are like the others—worms in chestnuts. It is bad because you are contented. I hate life as much as you do, far more; but I am not satisfied; how could anyone be?”