“Go then,” she said. “You won’t have another chance, but I don’t care. I’m feeling restless—this damn spring. I’ll go into Harry. He’s old and tired, but I believe he’s more of a man than you.” Although she spoke of going she did not go, but watched him with faintly amused eyes. Andrews moistened his lips, which were dry. He felt thirsty. He no longer tried to keep his eyes off her body. He knew now that he could not move away.
“I’ll stay,” he said. He put his knee on the bed, but her hands held him away.
“Not like that,” she said. “I’m not a harlot. Take off those things.” He hesitated for a moment and glanced at the candle.
“No there must be a little light,” she whispered, a little run of excitement in her tone, “so that we can see each other.”
He obeyed her unwillingly. He felt that he was raising a barrier of time between Elizabeth and any help which he might bring. Even now he could not forget the dream, vision, fantasy, what you will, which he had seen in the candle’s light, it was conquered only when he felt the girl’s body stretched along his own.
“Closer,” she said. His fingers closed on her, pinching the flesh. He buried his mouth between her breasts. He could see nothing but he heard her laugh a little. “You cannot hurt me like that,” she said …
He opened his eyes and thought at first how strange it was that a candle should burn with a silver flame. Then he saw that the candle was out and the light was the first of day. He sat up and looked at his companion. She slept with her mouth slightly open, breathing hard. He eyed first her body and then his own with disgust. He touched her shoulder gingerly with his hand, and she opened her eyes. “I should cover that,” he said, and turning his back, put his feet over the side of the bed.
From her voice he judged that she was smiling, but her smile which in the dark had seemed the beckoning of a passionate mystery, he considered now a shallow mechanical thing. He was disgusted with himself and her. He had been treading, he felt, during the last few days on the border of a new life, in which he would learn courage and even self forgetfulness, but now he had fallen back into the slime from which he had emerged.
“Have you enjoyed yourself?” she asked.
“I’ve wallowed,” he said, “if that’s what you mean.”
He could imagine her pouting at him and he hated that pout. “Am I pleasanter than all the other women you’ve boasted about?”
“You’ve made me feel myself dirtier,” he answered. But is there no way out of this slime? he thought silently. I was a fool and imagined I was escaping, but now I have sunk so deep that surely I’ve reached the bottom.
“I could kill myself,” he said aloud.
The girl laughed contemptuously. “You haven’t the courage,” she said, “and anyway what of that fair one who’s in danger?”
Andrews put his hand to his head. “You made me forget her,” he said. “I can’t face her after this.”
“How young you are,” she said. “Surely you know by this time that the feeling won’t last. For a day we are disgusted and disappointed and disillusioned and feel dirty all over. But we are clean again in a very short time, clean enough to go back and soil ourselves all over again.”
“One must reach an end some time.”
“Never.”
“Are you a devil as well as a harlot?” Andrews asked with interest, but without anger. “Do you mean to say that it’s no use trying to be clean?”
“How often have you felt sick and disgusted and resolved never to sin again?”
“I can’t count them. You are right. It’s no use. Why can’t I die?”
“How curious. You are one of those people—I’ve met them before—who can’t rid themselves of a conscience. How talkative one becomes after a bout of this. I’ve noticed it often. I thought you were going to rescue that girl of yours from danger. Why don’t you go? It’s ridiculous to sit on the edge of a bed naked and philosophise.”
“It may be a trap and they’ll kill me.”
“I thought you wouldn’t go when it came to the point.”
“You are wrong,” Andrews stood up, “that’s the very reason why I’m going.”
When he left the hotel he took no precautions whatever, but walked down the street with his eyes fixed straight in front of him. He felt no fear of death, but a terror of life, of going on soiling himself and repenting and soiling himself again. There was, he felt, no escape. He had no will left. For certain exalted moments he had dreamed of taking Elizabeth to London, of gaining her love and marrying her, but now he saw that even if he gained that high desire, it would only be to soil her and not cleanse himself. When I had been married to her for a month, he thought, I would be creeping out of the house on the sly to visit prostitutes. The cool air of early morning touched him in vain. He was hot with shame and self-loathing. He longed with a ridiculous pathos for the mere physical purification of a bath.
He reached the downs as a first orange glow lifted above the eastern horizon. Its fragile soaring beauty, like a butterfly with delicate powdered wings resting on a silver leaf, touched him and increased his shame. If he had not seen Lucy but had started direct for the cottage some hours before, how that glow would have heartened him. What a prelude it would have
