Vividly the scene of his first kiss that January night in Nasyngton came back to him. He remembered it against her.
“Don’t, please, Virginia!” he begged her. “I do hate your thinking of all that....”
She stared at him miserably. There were no tears in her eyes now, they were intent beyond his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said plaintively. “Only I see men. Suddenly, sitting here—I see men. You and I are so happy, you think such fine things about me, and you make me fine—but sometimes I see men! Men who wanted to be happy with me, you know. I was so easy, Ivor ... and then I was so cruel.... Some haven’t forgiven me yet. There are a few men in the world this minute who hate me for a beastly woman, and they are right, for they’ve never seen me with you. I’ve been awful vicious, Ivor....”
And he remembered the feeling she had once given him of the “wastes” within her, the lawless wastes where Virginia’s soul wandered in lawlessness, the bleak wastes of angry indifference; and how he had seen her, felt her, dropping thither from his love, and how he had somehow clutched her back, he never knew how—this soft and tender Virginia, pitiful and so full of pity!
“You are thinking lovely things about me!” she cried in distress. “I see by your eyes, Ivor.”
And her arm swept round the wide and dim studio in an impotent gesture.
“Why don’t you see that I don’t deserve all this?” she cried.
3
For all these things came to pass in a studio in the Place du Tertre, which is a small square lying flat on top of the Butte above Montmartre, in the white shadow and beneath the white cupolas of the queer church of Sacré Cœur.