She trembled from head to foot, he saw it but went on calmly.
“You are not strong enough now for any trouble of that sort, but later on, of course, some arrangement must be come to. By the way, what will your father and mother say of this?”
“They will not say anything,” she said bitterly, “they will silently wonder together in the library.”
“And Dacre—”
“Dacre is a fool.”
“The world?” he asked.
He felt quite interested in the answer, the shock was beginning to freeze the pith in him.
“I don’t think the world will speak of me, I have no quality it can seize on for gossip. No gossip has any savour unless it deals with sexual relations and until now I thought I was absolutely sexless,” she said slowly, looking blankly out into space.
Her face was awful, her husband turned away from it.
“Gwen, Gwen,” he said at last, coming back to her, “do you understand what you are doing?”