His eyelids stung him as if they had been cut by little, little knives close under the eyeballs. He turned from her, shamed, as if he had witnessed some indecency, some outrage on a beautiful innocent thing.
Outside in the sunlight his tears dazzled him an instant and sank back into their stinging ducts.
Yes, it had stung him. And he had got to end it, somehow, for Winny's sake. He had no idea how to set about it. He could not let the little thing come and do his wife's work for her, like that, on the sly, for nothing. And yet he could not tell her not to come.
And he asked himself again and again, "Why, why does she do it? Why? Like that—for nothing?"
His heart began to beat uncomfortably, trying to tell him why. But he did not listen to it. He was angry with his heart for trying to tell him things he did not know and did not want to know.
No. He ought not to let her keep on coming. But what was he to do? How could he tell her not to come?
He went home through Wandsworth that evening and called at St. Ann's Terrace. Winny was there. She came down to him where he waited on the doorstep. As they stood there he could see over the low palings of the gardens the window of the little house where he had climbed in that night, that Sunday night, more than two years ago.
He said he had come to ask her to spend Bank Holiday with them. They might go for a sort of picnic to Richmond Park, and she must come back to supper.
That was his idea, his solution, his inspiration; that she must come; that she must be asked, must be implored to come; but as a guest, in high honor, and in festival.