de la Rochefoucauld: “Maxims.”
Half-past twelve was striking, as Eric entered his flat. A pile of letters awaited him, but he went into his bedroom without looking at them and began to undress. His unexpected walk had tired him, and he wanted to go to sleep before his brain woke up to puzzle itself over Ivy Maitland or to reconstruct his meeting with Barbara and imagine ways in which he could have carried it off with greater dignity or triumph. Until twenty minutes ago he fancied that he understood the few elements of Ivy’s simple character; but, if she were forcing her way into Gaymer’s flat to evict another woman, she had more passion and determination than her record of short-lived impulses warranted his expecting....
The telephone-bell by his bed mercilessly violated the silence of the room; and he spun around to face it, dropping his watch. No one but Barbara had ever telephoned to him at such an hour; at such an hour she had hardly missed one night in fifteen months, when they were both in London; when last she telephoned to him at such an hour, two and a half years before, he had returned home after saying good-bye to her; next day he was leaving for America; and he had let the bell ring on unanswered, muffling it with his handkerchief, when he could bear the noise no longer and trying to face his new conception of Barbara as a woman for whom honour and love had no meaning. For two and a half years he had wondered what would have happened if he had listened to her pleading... He took a step towards the bed and then retraced it.
As he picked up his watch and continued to wind it, the bell rang again. This time he advanced to the telephone unhesitatingly, but with the dread of a man compelled to draw back the sheet from a corpse’s face.
“Hullo?”
“Is that Mr. Lane? It’s Lady Maitland speaking. I hope you weren’t asleep?”
He sat heavily on the bed, limp for the moment with relief.
“Oh, I’m not undressed yet, thanks.”
“I rang you up to find out what had happened to Ivy. She’s not come in yet; and she’s such a little harum-scarum... Did you bring her home?”
Eric wanted to think over the answer and knew that he had no time.