Moths flittered and spun in the light of the head-lamps; beyond the two still long shafts of brightness the night looked very dark. How many miles from home?
At length she said:
‘I take it this is not a proposal of marriage, Julian.’
He laughed.
‘No, my dear, it is not. Nothing so grim.’
‘Ah, I see—your mistress.’
Her voice and her words made her wonder if she were not holding a conversation in a dream: there was the same feeling of having made a pronouncement of the first importance; but whose meaning you could not detect.
Julian’s mistress.... The idea was for some reason profoundly shocking.
A French, an Austrian, a Russian; and now an English.... But perhaps he had been lying then. He did tell such lies about his experiences.
‘I’m not made for matrimony any more than you are,’ he said in a voice of gentle explanation. ‘Can you imagine me as a husband? What hell for some poor fool!... Yet,’ he added with a sigh, ‘I’d be fond of my children. I’d like to bring up a son. But I shall never have one.’