You've still got enough that's
right in you, for you to know."

She waited. He sat still, as if drawn by hot wires.

Then she slipped across to him, put her arms round him, sank on her
knees at his side, and sank her face against his thigh.

"Say you know how wrong you are. Say you know how cruel you've been to
me," she pleaded. But under her female pleading and appeal he felt the
iron of her threat.

"You DO know it," she murmured, looking up into his face as she crouched
by his knee. "You DO know it. I can see in your eyes that you know it.
And why have you come back to me, if you don't know it! Why have you
come back to me? Tell me!" Her arms gave him a sharp, compulsory little
clutch round the waist. "Tell me! Tell me!" she murmured, with all her
appeal liquid in her throat.

But him, it half overcame, and at the same time, horrified. He had a
certain horror of her. The strange liquid sound of her appeal seemed
to him like the swaying of a serpent which mesmerises the fated,
fluttering, helpless bird. She clasped her arms round him, she drew
him to her, she half roused his passion. At the same time she coldly
horrified and repelled him. He had not the faintest feeling, at the
moment, of his own wrong. But she wanted to win his own self-betrayal
out of him. He could see himself as the fascinated victim, falling to
this cajoling, awful woman, the wife of his bosom. But as well, he had
a soul outside himself, which looked on the whole scene with cold
revulsion, and which was as unchangeable as time.

"No," he said. "I don't feel wrong."

"You DO!" she said, giving him a sharp, admonitory clutch. "You DO.
Only you're silly, and obstinate, babyish and silly and obstinate. An
obstinate little boy--you DO feel wrong. And you ARE wrong. And you've
got to say it."

But quietly he disengaged himself and got to his feet, his face pale and
set, obstinate as she said. He put his hat on, and took his little bag.
She watched him curiously, still crouching by his chair.

"I'll go," he said, putting his hand on the latch.

Suddenly she sprang to her feet and clutched him by the shirt-neck, her
hand inside his soft collar, half strangling him.

"You villain," she said, and her face was transfigured with passion as
he had never seen it before, horrible. "You villain!" she said thickly.
"What have you come here for?"

His soul went black as he looked at her. He broke her hand away from his
shirt collar, bursting the stud