She turned. "I think I'm going for a little spin somewhere by myself. I shall come back in time for dinner. Then I shall go down to Wandsworth and fetch Baby."
"I'll do that."
"No, you won't. You'll stay with Violet," she said.
"And what about your holiday?"
"My holiday's all right. Don't you worry."
She was out of the house and in the garden. Mechanically he wheeled her bicycle out into the road. He was utterly submissive to her will.
She mounted, and he ran by her side; she pressed on her pedals, compelling him to run fast and faster; she set her mouth hard, grinning, and forced the pace, and he ran at the top of his speed and laughed. At the end of the Avenue she turned, waved to him gaily and was gone.
Upstairs on her bed, in the room of the love knots, Violet lay and writhed. She lay on her face. She had wetted her pillow with her tears; she had flung it aside and was digging her hands into Ransome's pillow with a tearing, disemboweling motion. Every now and then, with the regularity of a machine, she gave out a sob and a groan that shook her.
He found her so.
She turned on her side as he entered, and showed him her face scarlet and swollen with crying.