But when you see him—Mr Durham—tell him I didn't mean —say there's no one whom I'd rather— —go

"But when you see him—Mr Durham—tell him I didn't mean —say there's no one whom I'd rather—"
"—go wrong with," he supplied: not till later did he under-stand his own blackguardism.
Hiding her face, Ada collapsed.
"Ishall not tell him. I shall never see Durham again to tell. You've the satisfaction of breaking up that friendship."
She sobbed, "I don't mind that—you've always been so un-kind to us, always." He drew up at last. Kitty had said that sort of thing to him, but never Ada. He saw that beneath their ob-sequious surface his sisters disliked him: he had not even suc-ceeded at home. Muttering "It's not my fault," he left her.
A refined nature would have behaved better and perhaps have suffered less. Maurice was not intellectual, nor religious, nor had he that strange solace of self-pity that is granted to some. Except on one point his temperament was normal, and he behaved as would the average man who after two years of happiness had been betrayed by his wife. It was nothing to him that Nature had caught up this dropped stitch in order to continue her pat-tern. While he had love he had kept reason. Now he saw Clive's change as treachery and Ada as its cause, and returned in a few hours to the abyss where he had wandered as a boy.
After this explosion his career went forward. He caught the
usual train to town, to earn and spend money in the old man-ner; he read the old papers and discussed strikes and the divorce laws with his friends. At first he was proud of his self-control: did not he hold Clive's reputation in the hollow of his hand? But he grew more bitter, he wished that he had shouted while he had the strength and smashed down this front of lies. What if he too were involved? His family, his position in society—they had been nothing to him for years. He was an outlaw in disguise. Perhaps among those who took to the greenwood in old time there had been two men like himself—two. At times he enter-tained the dream. Two men can defy the world.
Yes: the heart of his agony would be loneliness. He took time to realize this, being slow. The incestuous jealousy, the morti-fication, the rage at his past obtuseness—these might pass, and having done much harm they did pass. Memories of Clive might pass. But the loneliness remained. He would wake and gasp "I've no one!" or "Oh Christ, what a world!" Clive took to visiting him in dreams. He knew there was no one, but Clive, smiling in his sweet way, said "I'm genuine this time," to torture him. Once he had a dream about the dream of the face and the voice, a dream about it, no nearer. Also old dreams of the other sort, that tried to disintegrate him. Days followed nights. An immense silence, as of death, encircled the young man, and as he was go-ing up to town one morning it struck him that he really was dead. What was the use of money-grubbing, eating, and playing games? That was all he did or had ever done.
"Life's a damn poor show," he exclaimed, crumpling up theDaily Telegraph.
The other occupants of the carriage who liked him began to laugh.
"I'd jump out of the window for twopence."