Everard,--that was an outrage, that about sexual allurements; just simply an outrage. She flushed at the remembrance of it; her whole body seemed to flush hot. She felt as though never again would she be able to bear him making love to her. He had spoilt that. But that was a dreadful way to feel, that was destructive of the very heart of marriage. No, she mustn't let herself,--she must stamp that feeling out; she must forget what he had said. He couldn't really have meant it. He was still in a temper. She oughtn't to have gone down. But how could she know? All this was new to her, a new side of Everard. Perhaps, she thought, watching the reflection of the flames flickering on the shiny, slippery oak floor, only people with tempers should marry people with tempers. They would understand each other, say the same sorts of things, tossing them backwards and forwards like a fiery, hissing ball, know the exact time it would last, and be saved by their vivid emotions from the deadly hurt, the deadly loneliness of the one who couldn't get into a rage. Loneliness. She lifted her head and looked round the room. No, she wasn't lonely. There was still---- Suddenly she went to the bookshelves, and began pulling out the books quickly, hungrily reading their names, turning over their pages in a kind of starving hurry to get to know, to get to understand, Vera.... XXI Meanwhile Wemyss had gone into the drawing-room till such time as his wife should choose to allow him to have his own library to himself again. For a long while he walked up and down it thinking bitter things, for he was very angry. The drawing-room was a big gaunt room, rarely used of recent years. In the early days, when people called on the newly arrived Wemysses, there had been gatherings in it,--retaliatory festivities to the vicar, to the doctor, to the landlord, with a business acquaintance or two of Wemyss's, wife appended, added to fill out. These festivities, however, died of inanition. Something was wanting, something necessary to nourish life in them. He thought of them as he walked about the echoing room from which the last guest had departed years ago. Vera, of course. Her fault that the parties had left off. She had been so slack, so indifferent. You couldn't expect people to come to your house if you took no pains to get them there. Yet what a fine room for entertaining. The grand piano, too. Never used. And Vera who made such a fuss about music, and pretended she knew all about it.