He wondered if it were so.
Here she was before his eyes, more beautiful than in any of his dreams, a diffuse vision compressed once more into a tangible form, fragrant and warm, full of coursing blood and tremors, no doubt still capable of those same ecstatic appearances and vocal rhapsodies. All his swarming, jealous thoughts were consuming him, as warrior ants might consume some wretched victim of King Muene-Motapa. He felt that this deliberate farce must end, that he must spring through the door, find the other, kill him with one blow, and then rush away from this woman who, like a fallen deity, lay weeping again, her face between her arms, somehow pathetic under this retribution for the inconstancy that she pretended was pity.
She raised her face, and pronounced:
"There must be some way. But I can't think any more."
"There are two ways. One is for me to go. The other is to tell him."
She sat up and clutched the cushions on each side of her.
"You ask me to go into that room, and you might as well say shoot him through the heart?"
He said to himself, "How she sticks to it! This pretense is all she has to cling to, poor thing, in lieu of saying straight out, 'I can't return to that old adventure now. Too much time has intervened; I'm no longer the same woman. I must stick to this new romance.'" He said to himself, "I shall get away from here this moment." He turned toward the doorway.
"Remember," he told her wearily, "I'm depending on your silence."
Struck by the folly of that caution, he hurried into the hall, as though to escape an outburst of laughter.