She cheered him. There was something in her point of view. He must put the problem of Joyce out of his mind and heart as far as possible. Get busy! Well, he was writing some more articles for The New World. They helped him to forget.
And yet this girl, Janet, so gay, so kind, so wise, even in spite of her extravagance of thought and speech, was beginning to trouble him in the very way he wished to avoid, in the very way she derided and denounced.
She troubled him one night when she said suddenly, “A pity, Sir Faithful, that you didn’t marry me instead of Joyce! I understand you better. We think more on the same line. And you were my first Dream Knight, in the days when you kissed me in Kensington Gardens.”
It was just like her to come out with a startling thing like that, in a matter-of-fact way, as though it were nothing out of the ordinary, and undisturbing. He was strangely disturbed, and hardly knew what to say.
“Too late now!” was all he could say, and then laughed uneasily.
She troubled him again by the way she used to sit on a little low stool by his side when they were alone together in the evening or even when Katherine Wild was with them, leaning her head against his knees. He liked it very much because it was so comradely and sisterly, but he was human and separated from his wife, and not a disembodied spirit.
He was troubled more than all one night when he was leaving her and she put her face up to be kissed and said, “A chaste salute, Sir Faithful? Why not?”
He kissed her, and it was good in his loneliness. And yet not good in his conscience. For he had faith and loyalty, to Joyce who was his wife, though unkind to him, and to Christy who was his friend, and the lover of this girl.
As he went back to his mother’s house in Sloane Street, he spoke aloud the old catchword which was his usual comment on life:
“It’s all very difficult!”