“Good-bye, Bridget.” Then Conscience—the officious—spoke. Jasper bent forward to kiss his wife.
She drew back.
“Isn’t that rather ridiculous?” she asked, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
Jasper flushed. He hated anything approaching ridicule. He had taken her word-slashings quietly. They had not yet even fully penetrated his plate-armour of self-righteousness.
“Just as you like,” he said. “I only thought that as I was not seeing you again——”
“Three months or a lifetime! It doesn’t make much difference to us, does it?”
He met her eyes. Beneath the look in them his own fell. For the first time in his life he experienced something like genuine shame, not the little meretricious prickings of conscience with which he was wont to bewail his small or imaginary sins. To his great short-comings he was blind.
“You hate me?” he asked.
“No,” she said shortly, “for a wonder, I don’t. Good-bye.”
He went to the door, opened it, and passed out. A second later she heard the iron gate clang to, and his receding steps on the pavement.