! A bad-bad business!'

And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.

Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less real,
poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence than to
those within. Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more real and
poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than that of the tame
product. Opinion--she knew--would say, that having wilfully chosen a
position outside morality she had not half the case for brokenheartedness
she would have had if Fort had been her husband: Opinion--she knew--would
say she had no claim on him, and the sooner an illegal tie was broken,
the better! But she felt fully as wretched as if she had been married.
She had not wanted to be outside morality; never in her life wanted to be
that. She was like those who by confession shed their sins and start
again with a clear conscience. She never meant to sin, only to love, and
when she was in love, nothing else mattered for the moment. But, though
a gambler, she had always so far paid up. Only, this time the stakes
were the heaviest a woman can put down. It was her last throw; and she
knew it. So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there was hope,
even when the curtain fell on a love-affair! But for Leila the lamp of
belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain dropped she felt
that she must sit in the dark until old age made her indifferent. And
between forty-four and real old age a gulf is fixed. This was the first
time a man had tired of her. Why! he had been tired before he began, or
so she felt. In one swift moment as of a drowning person, she saw again
all the passages of their companionship, knew with certainty that it had
never been a genuine flame. Shame ran, consuming, in her veins. She
buried her face in the cushions. This girl had possessed his real heart
all the time. With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong
horse; I ought to have backed Edward. I could have turned that poor
monk's head. If only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his
letter up, I could have made poor Edward love me!' Ifs! What folly!
Things happened as they must!

And, starting up, she began to roam the little room. Without Jimmy she
would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too! 'I can't bear to
see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without him! It's
really funny!' The thought of her hospital f