Paradoxically it was at that moment the old impulse returned. He came forward, holding out his arms to her. But this time she shrank back, cowering into the chair. Her movement brought him to his senses.
"You see how I can hardly speak to you. I must get on, and get done. I want to tell you how I met her ... Tony."
Janey shuddered. She had now come to the most awful pain of all.
"Tony ..." repeated Quentin. She noticed how he dwelt on the word, as if he were drawing strength from it, and at the same time she saw a slight change in his manner. He lifted his head and spoke more steadily.
"I met her at a literary function, and I sat beside her all the evening. I remember every minute—I didn't speak much, nor did she, but a wonderful simplicity and calm seemed to radiate from her, a beautiful innocence—— What is it, Janey?"
"Nothing—go on."
"She was so young, scarcely more than a child—young and sweet. When I got home that night I felt for the first time an infinite peace in my soul—I felt all quiet and simple. I didn't worry or brood any more. I wasn't in love with her then—oh, no!—but I wanted to meet her again, just for the quiet of it. I did meet her shortly afterwards, and it was as beautiful as before. Then suddenly it all rushed over me—I wanted her, for my own; because she was pure and childlike and simple and inexperienced."
The confidence of his voice had grown, and in his eyes was something Janey had never seen there before. She now realised a little what Tony meant to him—what she, Janey, had never meant. She knew now that she could never win him back, and more, that she did not particularly want to. Tony stood to Quentin for all that was lovely and heroic in womanhood, whereas she, his Janey, had never been more to him than the incarnation of his own desperate passions. She stepped back, and the action was symbolical—she stepped out of his way. Her pleadings would no longer harass and shake him, she would leave him to his salvation, since he loved it better than the woman who had meekly renounced hers for his sake.
"I grew desperate for her," continued Quentin, in the new assured voice. "Oh, don't think I gave you up without a struggle!—I had a dreadful time. I suffered horribly. But what will not a man do for his soul? I felt that my soul was at stake. It's damned rot to talk of men turning away from salvation—no man can get a real chance of salvation and not grasp it at once. Oh, don't think it didn't cut me to the heart to treat you as I did! I felt a swine and a cad, but I saw that I was grasping my only chance of redemption—and yours too. I couldn't help it, I tell you—no man can. Oh, don't think that if I could have saved myself with you, I wouldn't have done it rather than.... Oh, my God!—but I couldn't."
There are moments in a woman's life when she is simply staggered by the selfishness of the male, and yet to every woman there is something inevitable about it, so that it does not stir up her rage and contempt, as it would if she saw it in her own sex. Janey felt no anger with Quentin, she only thought how pitifully young he looked.