proper fortitude, would have made appropriate
answers. There were precedents for such an occasion. And no one would
have cared. If she had only died! The promises, the terrors, the hopes
of eternity, are the concern of the corrupt dead; but the obvious
sweetness of life belongs to living, healthy men. And life was his
concern: that sane and gratifying existence untroubled by too much love
or by too much regret. She had interfered with it; she had defaced it.
And suddenly it occurred to him he must have been mad to marry. It was
too much in the nature of giving yourself away, of wearing--if for
a moment--your heart on your sleeve. But every one married. Was all
mankind mad!

In the shock of that startling thought he looked up, and saw to the
left, to the right, in front, men sitting far off in chairs and looking
at him with wild eyes--emissaries of a distracted mankind intruding to
spy upon his pain and his humiliation. It was not to be borne. He rose
quickly, and the others jumped up, too, on all sides. He stood still in
the middle of the room as if discouraged by their vigilance. No escape!
He felt something akin to despair. Everybody must know. The servants
must know to-night. He ground his teeth . . . And he had never noticed,
never guessed anything. Every one will know. He thought: "The woman's a
monster, but everybody will think me a fool"; and standing still in the
midst of severe walnut-wood furniture, he felt such a tempest of anguish
within him that he seemed to see himself rolling on the carpet, beating
his head against the wall. He was disgusted with himself, with the
loathsome rush of emotion breaking through all the reserves that guarded
his manhood. Something unknown, withering and poisonous, had entered
his life, passed near him, touched him, and he was deteriorating. He was
appalled. What was it? She was gone. Why? His head was ready to burst
with the endeavour to understand her act and his subtle horror of it.
Everything was changed. Why? Only a woman gone, after all; and yet he
had a vision, a vision quick and distinct as a dream: the vision of
everything he had thought indestructible and safe in the world crashing
down about him, like solid walls do before the fierce breath of
a hurricane. He stared, shaking in every limb, while he felt the
destructive breath, the mysterious breath, the breath of passion, stir
the profound peace of the house. He looked round in fear. Yes. Crime may
be forgiven; uncalc