" There must have been other girls then. A regular procession.
Before he married Effie.

She could see them. Pink and gold girls, fluffy and fat; girls with red
hair; brown haired girls with wide slippery mouths. Then Effie. Then
herself, with her thick bobbed mane and white face. And the beautiful
mouth he praised so.

Was it the disgust of knowing that you were only one of a procession? Or
was it that Effie's sad, sharp face slipped between?

And the end of it. The break-down, when Effie was ill.

His hysterical cries. "My wife, Sharlie, my wife. We oughtn't to have
done it....

"... I can't forgive myself, Sharlie. I've been a brute, a beast, a
stupid animal....

"... When I think of what we've done to her--the little innocent
thing--the awful unhappiness--I could kill myself."

"Do you mean she knows?"

"She thinks. That's bad enough. If she knew, it would kill her."

"You said she wouldn't care. You said there was another man."

"There wasn't."

"You lied, then?"

"Of course I lied. You wouldn't have come to me if I hadn't."

"You told me you didn't care for her."

He had met that with his "Well--what did you want?"

She went over and over it, turning it round and round to see if there was
any sort of light it would look a bit better in. She had been going to
give him up so beautifully. The end of it was to have been wonderful,
quiet, like a heavenly death, so that you would get a thrill out of that
beauty when you remembered. All the beauty of it from the beginning,
taken up and held together, safe at the end. You wouldn't remember
anything else. And he had killed it, with his conscience, suddenly sick,
whining, slobbering, vomiting remorse--Turning on her.

"I can't think what you wanted with me. Why couldn't you have let
me alone!"

Her own voice, steady and hard. "If you feel dirty, go and wash yourself
outside. Don't try and rub it off on me. I want to keep clean."

"Isn't it a bit too late?"

"Not if you clear out at once. This minute." He called her "a cruel
little devil."

She could forgive him for that. She could forgive him ending it in any
beastly way he liked, provided he did end it. But not last night. To come
crawling back, three months after, wanting to begin again. Thinking it
was possible.

There had been nothing worse than that. Except that one dreadful minute
last year when he had wanted to raise her salary--afterwards--and she had
said "What _for_?" And their faces ha