ed you. . . ."

"I did not know," she whispered.

"Good God!" he cried. "Why do you imagine I married you?"

The indelicacy of his obtuseness angered her.

"Ah--why?" she said through her teeth.

He appeared overcome with horror, and watched her lips intently as
though in fear.

"I imagined many things," she said, slowly, and paused. He watched,
holding his breath. At last she went on musingly, as if thinking aloud,
"I tried to understand. I tried honestly. . . . Why? . . . To do the
usual thing--I suppose. . . . To please yourself."

He walked away smartly, and when he came back, close to her, he had a
flushed face.

"You seemed pretty well pleased, too--at the time," he hissed, with
scathing fury. "I needn't ask whether you loved me."

"I know now I was perfectly incapable of such a thing," she said,
calmly, "If I had, perhaps you would not have married me."

"It's very clear I would not have done it if I had known you--as I know
you now."

He seemed to see himself proposing to her--ages ago. They were strolling
up the slope of a lawn. Groups of people were scattered in sunshine.
The shadows of leafy boughs lay still on the short grass. The coloured
sunshades far off, passing between trees, resembled deliberate and
brilliant butterflies moving without a flutter. Men smiling amiably,
or else very grave, within the impeccable shelter of their black coats,
stood by the side of women who, clustered in clear summer toilettes,
recalled all the fabulous tales of enchanted gardens where animated
flowers smile at bewitched knights. There was a sumptuous serenity in
it all, a thin, vibrating excitement, the perfect security, as of an
invincible ignorance, that evoked within him a transcendent belief in
felicity as the lot of all mankind, a recklessly picturesque desire to
get promptly something for himself only, out of that splendour unmarred
by any shadow of a thought. The girl walked by his side across an open
space; no one was near, and suddenly he stood still, as if inspired, and
spoke. He remembered looking at her pure eyes, at her candid brow; he
remembered glancing about quickly to see if they were being observed,
and thinking that nothing could go wrong in a world of so much charm,
purity, and distinction. He was proud of it. He was one of its makers,
of its possessors, of its guardians, of its extollers. He wanted to
grasp it solidly, to get as much gratification as he could out of it;
and in view of its