'I felt I ought to come, Marston. As things are, the straight thing is for me to marry her--if you'll divorce her.' He looked at Edward questioningly, but Edward stared beyond him with a strange expression of utter nausea, hopeless loss, and loathing of all created things. Reddin went on: 'Her place is with me. It's my duty to look after her now, as it's my child she's going to have.' He could not resist this jibe of the virile to the non-virile. Besides, if he could make Marston angry, perhaps he would fight again, and fighting was so much better than this uncomfortable silence. 'I should naturally pay all expenses and maintenance wherever she was; I never mind paying for my pleasures.' Edward's eyes smouldered, but he said nothing. 'Of course, she can't _expect_ either of us to see to her in her position' (Edward clenched his hands), 'but I intend to do the decent thing. I'm never hard on a woman in that state; some fellows would be; but I've got a memory, hang it, and I'm grateful for favours received.' Why he should be at his very worst for Edward's benefit was not apparent, except that complete silence acts on the nerves, and nervousness brings out the real man. 'Well, think it over,' he concluded. 'You seem to be planning a sermon to-day. I shall be round here on Saturday--the meet's in the woods. I'll call then, and you can decide meanwhile. I don't mind whether she comes or not--at present. Later on, if I can't get on without her, I can no doubt persuade her to come again. But if you say divorce, I'll fetch her at once, and marry her as soon as you've got your decree. Damn you, Marston! Can't you speak? Could I say fairer than that, man to man?' Edward looked at him, and it was such a look that his face and ears reddened. 'You are not a man,' Edward said, with complete detachment; 'you are nothing but sex organs.' He went in and shut the door. Edward said nothing to Hazel of Reddin's visit. He forgot it himself when she came home; it slipped into the weary welter of life as he saw it now--all life, that is, other than Hazel's. Brutality, lust, cruelty--these summed up the world of good people and bad people. He rather preferred the bad ones; their eyes were less awful, and had less of the serpent's glitter and more of the monkey's leer. He did not shrink from Reddin as he shrank from his mother. Hazel came running to him through the graves. She had a little parcel specially tied up, and she wrote on it in the parlour with laborious love. It was tobacco. She had decided that he ought to smoke, because it would soothe him. They sat hand in hand by the fire that evening, and she told him of her aunt Prowde, and how she first came to know Reddin, and how he threatened to tell Edward of her first coming to Undern. She was astonished at the way his face lit up. 'Why didn't you tell me that before, dear? It alters everything. You did not go of your own choice at first, then. He had you in a snare.'