“I shall give up going, I say.” He shifted restlessly in his chair.
After breakfast next morning they parted, Tarr going back to work. Butcher, whom he had not seen for some days, came in. He agreed to go down into town and have lunch with him. Tarr put on a clean shirt. Talking to Butcher while he was changing, he stood behind his bedroom door. Men of ambitious physique, like himself, he had always noticed, were inclined to puff themselves out or let their arms hang in a position favourable to their muscles while changing before another man. To avoid this embarrassment or absurdity, he made a point of never exhibiting himself unclothed.
His conversation with Butcher did not fall on matters in hand. As with Anastasya, he was unusually reticent. He had turned over a new leaf. He became rather alarmed at this himself when he realized it. After lunch he left Butcher and went to the Mairie of the Quartier du Paradis and made inquiries about civil marriages. He did it like a sleep-walker.
He was particularly amiable with Bertha that day, and told her of his activities at the Mairie and made an appointment with her there for the next day.
Daily, then, he proceeded with his marriage arrangements in the afternoons, saw Bertha regularly, but without modifying the changed “correctness” of his attitude. The evenings he spent with Anastasya.
By the time the marriage preliminaries had been gone through, and Bertha and he could finally be united, his relations with Anastasya had become as close as formerly his friendship with Bertha had been. With the exception of the time from three in the afternoon to seven in the evening that he took off every day to see his fiancée, he was with her.
On September 29. three weeks after Bertha had told him that she was pregnant, he married her—in the time between three in the afternoon and seven in the evening set aside for her. Anastasya knew nothing about these things. Neither Bertha nor she were seeing their German women friends for the moment.
After the marriage at the Mairie Bertha and Tarr walked back to the Luxembourg Gardens and sat down. She had not during the three intervening weeks mentioned Anastasya. It was no time for generosity; she had done too much of that. Fräulein Vasek was the last person for whom she felt inclined to revive chivalry. She let Tarr marry her out of pity, and never referred to his confidence about his other love.
They sat for some time without speaking, as though they had quarrelled. She said, then:
“I am afraid, Sorbert, I have been selfish⸺”