,
she would gladly have murdered any woman who had refused to love him,
whether married or single; and that she had never cared what he had done
so long as he did not lose his physical and moral fastidiousness, and
did not lust after flesh that, having rotted its nerves with delight
unsanctioned by the spirit, knew corruption before death, and so long as
he had not pretended to any woman that he wanted her soul when he wanted
her body.

Seeing the tears in her eyes, he said kindly: "Well, I never thought
Mariquita's marriage counted for much. Do you remember how you took her
in one night when old de Rojas hid in a cloisonne vase on the verandah
for cover and potted at the stars with his gun?" But in his voice she
read wonder that for the first time in his life he should have found his
honest mother forging a moral attitude.

It was dreadful that, on this of all nights, and so soon after a special
illumination of their relationship, she should have set him making
allowances for her to cover up her insincerity. She stammered miserably:
"Well, Ellen's a dear, dear girl," and twisted her fingers in her lap,
and cried out in a fresh access of fever: "It's strange: this is a cold
night, and yet I feel hot and heavy and sticky as I did in Italy when
the sirocco blew."

He slid his hand into hers again and altered his position so that he
could smile up into her face. "Yes, she's a dear girl," he agreed
comfortingly.

"Then marry her soon!" she begged. "You're thirty. It's time you had a
life of your own. You must make the ties that will last when I am dead.
Marry her soon."

"Yes," he said. "I will marry her soon."

"At once!" she urged. "You can be married in three weeks, you know, if
you set things going immediately. You'll see about it to-morrow, won't
you?"

He said nothing, but stroked her hand.

"You will do that?" she almost shrieked.

He moistened his dry lips. "I hadn't thought ... quite so soon...."

"Why not? Why not?"

"She is so very young," he mumbled, and turned away his face.

"Why, Richard, Richard!" she exclaimed softly. "God knows I'm not in
love with old-fashioned ideas. I've only to put up my hand behind my ear
to feel a scar they gave me thirty years ago when I was hunted down
Roothing High Street. But it seems to me that the new-fashioned ideas
are as mawkish as the old ones were brutal. And worst of all is this
idea about marriage being dreadful." She blushed deeply. "It's not. What
you