“You’ve been very good to me, my dear,” said Joyce again. “I’m sorry—for everything.”
He went towards her, and took her roughly and drew her close to him.
“Joyce, this is frightful. It can’t happen. It’s just illusion. You’re my wife and I’m your lover. Let’s go away together, and forget all else. That baseness with Kenneth. It was just a moment of madness. Weakness. I understand! I’ve been tempted like that!”
She drew herself out of his arms.
“It’s not like that. It’s Kenneth I belong to; and he to me. One can’t go against revelation.”
He told her that she was murdering him. He’d suffered hell already because of their separation. He’d been tempted by sheer weakness and loneliness. Did she intend to send him straight to the devil?
She said something about his going to “a nice woman.” She couldn’t complain of that. He would find some one more patient with him, more in tune with his ideas.
It was that which angered him and broke down any kind of restraint to which he had clung.
“You’re hellishly immoral,” he told her. “God knows how far you’ve gone a header with that swine Murless. If there’s truth in what people say of you in Paris, I’ll wring your neck and blow his brains out.”
She stiffened at that threat.