"Don't talk to me about adoption! When you know perfectly well what I did it for."
"Why—what did you do it for?"
"To make things safe for us. To keep Fanny from knowing. To keep myself from knowing, Barbara. To keep you…. But it's too late to camouflage it. We know where we stand now."
"I don't think I do."
"You do. You do."
Mr. Waddington tossed his cigarette into the fire with a passionate gesture of abandonment. He came to her. She saw his coming. She saw it chiefly as the approach of a canary yellow waistcoat. She fixed her attention on the waistcoat as if it were the centre of her own mental equilibrium.
There was a bend in the waistcoat. Mr. Waddington was stooping over her with his face peering into hers. She sat motionless, held under his face by curiosity and fear. The whole phenomenon seemed to her incredible. Too incredible as yet to call for protest. It was as if it were not happening; as if she were merely waiting to see it happen before she cried out. Yet she was frightened.
This state lasted for one instant. The next she was in his arms. His mouth, thrust out under the big, rough moustache, was running over her face, like—like—while she pressed her hands hard against the canary yellow waistcoat, pushing him off, her mind disengaged itself from the struggle and reported—like a vacuum cleaner. That was it. Vacuum cleaner.
He gave back. There was no evil violence in him, and she got on her feet.
"How could you?" she cried. "How could you be such a perfect pig?"