He shuddered as she spoke his name.
"You'd better take your shoes off, and that coat," he said.
She took them off. He set the shoes in the fender. He hung the coat over the back of the chair to dry. As she stood upright the damp streamed from her skirts and drifted toward the fire.
"How about that skirt?"
"I could slip it off, and me stockings, too, if you didn't mind."
"All right," he muttered, and turned from her. He could hear the delicate silken swish of her draperies as they slid from her to the floor.
She was slenderer than ever in the short satin petticoat that was her inner sheath. Her naked feet, spread to the floor, showed white but unshapely. She stood there like some beautiful flower rising superbly from two ugly, livid, and distorted roots.
But neither her beauty nor her ugliness could touch him now.
"Look here," he said, "I'll get you some dry things."
His mind was dulled by the shock of seeing her, so that it was unable to attach any real importance or significance to her return. He knew her to be both callous and capricious; therefore, he told himself that there was no need to take her seriously now. The thing was to get rid of her as soon as possible. He smothered the instinct that had warned him of his danger, and persuaded himself that dry things would meet the triviality of her case.