s not the worst. She had learnt not to look for that spiritual
understanding in him. It mattered little that her unique suffering and
her unique consolation should remain alike ignored. The terrible thing
was that he should have come out of his own ordeal so smiling and so
unconcerned; that he could have sinned as he had sinned, and that he
could meet, after seven years, in his wife's presence, the partner of his
sin (whose face was a revelation of its grossness)--meet her, and not be
shaken by the shame of it. It showed how lightly he held it, how low his
standard was. She recalled, shuddering, the woman's face. Nothing in the
visions she had so shrunk from could compare with the violent reality.
For one moment of repulsion she saw him no less gross. She wondered,
would she have to reckon with that, henceforth, too?

She looked up, and met across the table the engaging innocence that she
recognised as the habitual expression of his face. He had no idea of what
dreadful things she was thinking of him. She put her thoughts from her,
admitting that she had never had to reckon with that, yet. But it was
terrible to her that, while he forced her to such thinking, he could sit
there so unconscious, and so unashamed. He sat there, bright-eyed,
smiling, a little flushed, playing with a light topic in a manner that
suggested a conscience singularly at ease. He went on sitting there,
absolutely unembarrassed, eating dessert. The eating of dinner was bad
enough, it showed complacency. But dessert argued callousness. She had
wondered how he could have any appetite at all. Her dinner had almost
choked her.

And she sat waiting for him to finish, hardly looking at him, detached,
saint-like, and still.

At last her silence struck him as a little ominous. He had distinct
misgivings as they turned into the study for coffee and his cigarette.
Anne sat up in her chair, refusing the support and luxury of cushions,
leaning a little forward with a brooding air.

"Well, Nancy," said he, "are you going to read to me?"

(Better to read than talk.)

"Not now," said she. "I want to talk to you."

He saw that it was not to be avoided. "Won't you let me have my coffee
and a cigarette first?"

She waited, silent, with a strained air of patience more uncomfortable
than words.

"Well," said he, lighting a second cigarette, and settling in the
position that would best enable him to bear it, "out with it, and get it
over."

"I want to know