“We seem to be talking in parables and conundrums. Joyce, let’s be human. Are you glad I’ve come back to you? Are we going to wipe the slate clean and start fresh and fair down the good old highway of married life? Say a word of love to me! Put your arms around my neck, and whisper what I want to hear.”
Joyce’s face flamed with colour for a moment, and then paled again.
“I can’t!” she said. “Something’s happened to put things all wrong—worse than before—between you and me.”
He stared at her, and knew that Fate, or Luck, or God, was going to hit him another blow between the eyes. What did she mean? That “Something’s happened—“?
“For Christ’s sake,” he said, “what do you mean?”
“It’s about Kenneth,” she answered in a low voice.
That name, after what Susan had said, after a night of dark agony, after a fight with frightful suspicion in which old base jealousies had surged up from the darkness of his mind, was like the jab of a bayonet in his brain.
“What the hell has he got to do with it?” he asked, very quietly.
Joyce touched his hand, as though asking for patience and understanding.
“You’ll get angry, I know. But I can’t help it. These things just happen. It’s as though we hadn’t any control over them, or over ourselves. I’ve always thought of Kenneth as nothing more than a good friend—a nice boy. We’ve known each other since we were kids. He understands me better than any one in the world. We speak in shorthand, as it were—the same code of thought and all that. He didn’t seem to mind when I married you. He thought it was good fun. It made no difference to our friendship. He’s perfectly straight and clean. He’d no idea at all, until a few days ago, that he loved me—in another kind of way. We found out quite suddenly, by accident. We were laughing—playing the fool, as usual. We were in a boat together on the lake in the Bois—you know—by the Île des Châlets. Suddenly he looked up at me with a kind of surprise in his eyes. And something seemed to fire a spark between us. I leant over him and kissed him, and he said, ‘What’s up with us?’—in a frightened way. We found out then that our old friendship had changed. For the first time I knew the meaning of love.—Never like yours and mine, Bertram. Kenneth and I were made for each other from the time we were babies together. It’s just that. Unfortunately we’ve only just found out. . . . I’m frightfully sorry, Bertram. But there it is, and nothing can alter it now.”