"I don't think people ever realize how deeply this question of physical fidelity has sunk into us—as a race, I mean. If you knew it, Marcella, it's absolutely the first thing of which people accuse those they love when they get deranged in any way. A dear old man I knew—he was quite eighty—a professor of psychology—when he was dying had the most terrible grief because he seriously thought he'd got unlimited numbers of girls into trouble. I suppose"—he went on slowly, wrestling with his thoughts as he put them into words—"I suppose it's because we resent infidelity so bitterly or else—why is it it touches us on the raw so much? Why is it you were so sick with me for saying that insane thing about King and Hop Lee?"
"I don't know, Louis," she said hopelessly. "It simply made me feel sick."
"But—it did touch you on the raw, you know, or you wouldn't have felt sick. It wouldn't make you feel sick if I accused you of murder or burglary—I believe it's simply because we might, all of us, very conceivably break the seventh commandment; in fact, I don't believe anybody goes through life, however sheltered and inhibited they may be, without wanting to break it at least once! And that's why we're so mad when anyone says we have."
She thought this out for a while.
"Well, I think that's perfectly disgusting, and that's all I can say about it," she said finally.
Later he explained in a very clear, concise way, the reason for his outburst. Partly it was periodic; partly it was the result of outside circumstances. He had lied to her to "keep his end up," he said; he had clung to his father's money because he could not bear that she should be penniless; then a letter from his mother, brought at his request by King, had upset him. It told how Violet had returned his engagement ring; she had forgotten to do it until her husband, noticing it in her jewel-case, had asked its history and insisted on its return. His mother had said she would keep it safe for him until he came back; his father had said it must be sold to pay some of the debts Louis had left. There had apparently been a family quarrel: the mother, wanting sympathy, had written to Louis about it. And he had felt angry with Violet, angry with Violet's husband, angry with his father. "That explains why, when I went off my head, I said I wasn't the Pater's son, and why I crystallized my annoyance with Violet into hatred of you."
There was a long silence. Marcella was learning things rapidly.
"Then, when everything outside goes well, we shall be happy, but if the tiniest thing upsets or annoys you I shall have to suffer?" she said calmly.
"Oh, my pet—" he began brokenly, and burst into tears.
She felt that his crying was pitiful, but very futile. Later, very shakily, he wrote a letter to his father at her dictation, and she posted it, thus cutting them off from England. He got better slowly, able, as his brain cleared, to treat himself as a doctor might have done. As soon as he seemed able to talk about the future she raised the subject.