five or six hours.... I used to keep awake whole nights cursing that
abuse. My wife used to run--she never, in whatever else she may have
misled me, tried to give me the impression that she was not a gallant
soul. But, once in the German Express, she would lean back, with one
hand to her side and her eyes closed. Well, she was a good actress. And
I would be in hell. In hell, I tell you. For in Florence I had at once
a wife and an unattained mistress--that is what it comes to--and in
the retaining of her in this world I had my occupation, my career, my
ambition. It is not often that these things are united in one body.
Leonora was a good actress too. By Jove she was good! I tell you, she
would listen to me by the hour, evolving my plans for a shock-proof
world. It is true that, at times, I used to notice about her an air
of inattention as if she were listening, a mother, to the child at her
knee, or as if, precisely, I were myself the patient.

You understand that there was nothing the matter with Edward
Ashburnham's heart--that he had thrown up his commission and had left
India and come half the world over in order to follow a woman who had
really had a "heart" to Nauheim. That was the sort of sentimental ass he
was. For, you understand, too, that they really needed to live in India,
to economize, to let the house at Branshaw Teleragh.

Of course, at that date, I had never heard of the Kilsyte case.
Ashburnham had, you know, kissed a servant girl in a railway train,
and it was only the grace of God, the prompt functioning of the
communication cord and the ready sympathy of what I believe you call
the Hampshire Bench, that kept the poor devil out of Winchester Gaol for
years and years. I never heard of that case until the final stages of
Leonora's revelations....

But just think of that poor wretch.... I, who have surely the right, beg
you to think of that poor wretch. Is it possible that such a luckless
devil should be so tormented by blind and inscrutable destiny? For there
is no other way to think of it. None. I have the right to say it, since
for years he was my wife's lover, since he killed her, since he broke
up all the pleasantnesses that there were in my life. There is no priest
that has the right to tell me that I must not ask pity for him, from
you, silent listener beyond the hearth-stone, from the world, or from
the God who created in him those desires, those madnesses....

Of course, I should not hear of