“I’ve told you I wasn’t—I’m tired of telling. Now, about this woman?”
“Never mind who she was. It’s not your affair.”
“But——”
“I’ve given you my definition of married fidelity,” he said, with an ugly, puzzling grin full on her quivering face. “Nothing matters—so long as the other one doesn’t find out. Find out—if you dare! If I ever see—your double—dogging me again, I’ll turn round in the streets and knock her down. Do you understand?”
“I hear—and I’m very sorry for the poor thing. I can only hope that she won’t cross your path, but—it’s nothing to me. Is it?”
He was out of the room, out of the flat before her lips closed after the mocking words. She fell back, shaking with degradation. She knew perfectly well that he would not return that night. She might drop her mask, spread the accusing violet gown on the bed, plant her dusty shoes in the middle of the room. She might cry her fill—but where was the good of that? Tears were bad diplomacy at the best of times. She was worn out enough by the burning shame of the glib lies she had been reeling off.
He would not come back that night. He had returned to—her—the brown person. Perhaps she had been waiting outside all the time. She got up, ran into the other room, began to feverishly unfasten her gown with one hand, while with the other she flung back the door of the wardrobe. She would follow them. If he saw her, knocked her down—so well! She would follow them—to the very door. Then she dropt down on the bed, shaking her head mournfully, twisting her hands. She wouldn’t follow—all motive for following was gone. She had been waiting, watching all these degrading weeks for the advent of a woman. The woman had come. She had believed that she would bring freedom in her hands. But she hadn’t; no woman ever would. It needed a subtler force to kill her love for that villain. She didn’t even feel jealous because he had gone away with her rival. She was contemptuous of him because her rival was so uninteresting—that was about all. Her strongest feeling was one of being stunned—as if he had struck her on the head, instead of on the breast. She didn’t mind much. She was relieved, immensely relieved, that it was no longer necessary to watch—to crawl stealthily about the streets like an unclean animal of prey. She only hoped that he would come back in the morning—and in a good temper. One must learn to wink at things.
As she sat on the bed, shaking her head in a foolish, silly fashion, and smiling at the wall with the self-satisfied air of a person mildly and harmlessly distraught, the outer door of the flat opened. She jumped up with a wild hope, a sick dread. She gave the one essential look in the glass, raised her hot fingers mechanically to her crumpled hair, and went back to the drawing-room.
Sutton was standing in the middle of it, his head bent in a listening way.
“Oh!” she said stiffly, with an air of collapse. “You!”