An entirely unmoral woman Magdalen was, but she had a firm etiquette of the heart: and this made her pre-eminent in a man’s regrets, for that etiquette of the heart is the rarest of all things—unless it is, however, that it is rarely observable in good women simply because of the many other commendable qualities that crowd one’s vision of them. Magdalen was a woman of honour in everything but honour. And Magdalen grew in Ivor’s mind to symbolise civilised women, in all the grace of kindness and imperfection, but he was to find that civilised women aren’t really like that; he was to find that the nicest women grow vindictive when they are bored (it is understood that men, when they are bored, just go away, extremely strong and silent); and that their unwilling constancy is often the cause of innumerable little antagonisms and caddishness, and that they are seldom dignified in their sudden dislike of an intimacy. They wish to draw back, that’s what it is. But Magdalen wished only to go on, “to find out.” And Ivor, to these later women, would speak of Magdalen, revenging himself on their crudities. He would not refer to her by name, of course, he would just suggest her somehow, a nameless and polite figure of his past, or he would rather bluntly say, “a woman I knew once,” and fix his dark eyes almost contemptuously on his listener—who perhaps, it was not impossible, knew that he was speaking of Magdalen Gray; and maybe she pitied him for being a fool about such a woman, or maybe she vaguely respected him for she didn’t quite know what. But, anyway, it was after he had known Magdalen Gray that Ivor grew to be vaguely spoken about as one of those men who are “nice about” women: a not unpleasing distinction, though of course vague....
Thus, tiresome though he was throughout that winter, Magdalen bore with him. It was he who finally could not bear with her.... Had she been unfaithful to him? He was her friend—that is what she said. But he knew that he was not her friend—not yet, anyway. He didn’t know how to be.... Had she been unfaithful to him? “What would you like me to answer?” she asked him, in the light of the “very shaded” lamp.
“If it will cure you of loving me,” she said thoughtfully, “I will tell you that I have been unfaithful to you....”
“If it will not cure you but only hurt you,” she said thoughtfully, “I will tell you that I have not been unfaithful to you....”
“It does not matter, anyway,” she said. “This infidelity business ... between you and me.”
And then they were silent for a long time, thinking how it didn’t matter—anyway. But of course it didn’t matter, this “infidelity business”—it was just a thing of the body, almost an accident, but love was a thing of the spirit. Love just swept it aside, love was everything, love took no stock of infidelity at all. Some women simply couldn’t be bodily faithful, that’s what it was; thank Heavens there were only a few women like that, but they were splendid in other ways, divine ways, and love must overlook infidelity. But love simply wouldn’t soar, it descended into the abyss and consorted with infidelity, and together they made a maelstrom that whizzed about young Ivor’s head and sickened him of life and love and himself—particularly of himself. For his supreme misery was not that Magdalen might have been unfaithful to him, but that he was unfaithful to himself.
She had wanted to be ravished, like a woman in a dream; and when the dream faded he found a friend, just a friend....
CHAPTER IX
1
In January, 1914, Ivor caught a cold in the head. He had always been remarkably immune from such little ailments, and had only once in his life been ill, of a vicious pneumonia long ago at school. He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with a cold in the head, he just took quinine and continued to blow his nose. One day he produced his cold to Magdalen, by special request, for he had avoided seeing her for a week; and Magdalen said that he had caught the thing because he was run down and that he must go away. She pointed out that he was the luckiest man in the world, with or without a cold in the head.