‘Isabel,’ he said at last, in a dull, tired voice--‘Isabel, you must forgive me if you can. I have been a beast. I must have been off my head. I feel as if I had been drunk, and was only just beginning to come to. Whatever rot I talked you must try and forget it, Isabel. I can’t make out what the devil can have come over me!’ The woman gave him an angry, challenging glance. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I won’t forget it. You spoke the truth. Why are you beginning to tell the old weary lies again? Surely we have got beyond that.’ Her words, her defiant tone, caught his attention. ‘You didn’t understand,’ he said. ‘I was a brute; there’s no more to be said. Don’t try to say any more. Of course you can’t understand. My God, what a damned muddle I have made of things!’ ‘But of course I do understand, Kingston. Nothing can undo what you have said. It didn’t need saying, and no amount of denials can ever make it untrue.’ Kingston looked at her anxiously. ‘Isabel,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘Do you realize what you are saying? I was fool enough to tell you----’ ‘What we both knew before in our heart of hearts,’ she interrupted passionately. ‘And now we know each other. Oh yes, I understand you. All of a sudden you have been overcome by some absurd qualm--some whim or other. You think we are to be separated by some ridiculous fad.’ Amazement held him. This time he fixed his eyes on her and spoke slowly, laboriously, as one speaks English to someone who can only understand a foreign language. ‘A fad!’ he repeated. ‘Hang it all, Isabel, is honour a fad, and decency, and all the rest of it? One does what one can. Is it only a whim?’ ‘Yes,’ she answered violently. ‘It is only a whim. These artificial scrupulosities of yours, they are just middle-class superstitions. You belong to me, and I belong to you. We know that is true. Very well, then; why should we deny in deed what we know to be true in fact. Oh, I have no patience with such whims. Nothing can separate us; why should we pretend to be separated by the fact that you have got what you call a wife? I am your wife. You have no other. You can’t have another. Your only duty is to me--to me and to yourself. All the rest is mere romantic sentimental nonsense.’ His fastidiousness swung him back into a reaction of almost physical repulsion as he contemplated her. The impossibility of making her understand any honourable point of view was dreadful. He loathed her with all his heart as she sat there trying to enforce her claim. And yet he could not deny her claim, and, despite his shuddering disgust, he loved her as much as ever, reluctantly, angrily, but with all the secret unreasoned impulses of the bondage that held him.