ways a wrong
'un? Had he believed in reclamation? He laughed out his disgust ...

No! He did not blame her. To blame her would have been ridiculous. She
was only what she was, and not worth blame. She was nothing at all.
How right, how cursedly right, were the respectable dames in the
accent of amused indifference which they employed for their precious
phrase, "the pretty ladies"! Well, he would treat her generously--but
through his lawyer.

And in the desolation, the dismay, the disillusion, the nausea which
ravaged him he was unwillingly conscious of fragments of thoughts that
flickered like transient flames far below in the deep mines of his
being.... "You are an astounding woman, Con." ... "Do you want me
to go to the bad altogether?" ... In offering him Queen had not
Concepcion made the supreme double sacrifice of attempting to bring
together, at the price of her own separation from both of them,
the two beings to whom she was most profoundly attached? It was a
marvellous deed.... Worry, volcanoes, revolutions--was he afraid
of them?... Were they not the very essence of life?... A figure of
nobility!... Sitting there now by the window over the river, listening
to the weir.... "I shall never be any more good." ... But she never
had a gesture that was not superb.... Was he really encrusted in
habits? Really like men whom he knew and despised at his club?... She
loved him.... And what rich, flattering love was her love compared
to--!... She was young.... Tenderness.... Such were the flames of dim
promise that nickered immeasurably beneath the dark devastation of his
mind. He ignored them, but he could not ignore them. He extinguished
them, but they were continually relighted.... A wedding?... What sort
of a wedding?... Poor Carlos, pathetically buried under the ruthless
happiness of others! What a shame!... Poor Carlos!

(Nice enough little cocotte, nothing else! But, of course,
incurable!... He remembered all her crimes now. How she had been late
in dressing for their first dinner. Her inexplicable vanishing from
the supper-party, never explained, but easily explicable now, perhaps.
And so on and so on.... Simpleton! Ass!)

He had walked heedless of direction. He was near Lechford House.
Many of its windows were lit. The great front doors were open. A
commissionaire stood on guard in front of them. To the railings was
affixed a newly-painted notice: "No person will be allowed to enter
these premises without a pa