Why was she doing it? Not for money. She could only be doing it
from the nostalgia of adventurous debauch. She was the slave of her
temperament, as the drunkard is the slave of his thirst. He had
told her that he would be out of town for the week end, on committee
business. He had distinctly told her that she must on no account
expect him on the Monday night. And her temperament had roused itself
from the obscene groves of her subconsciousness like a tiger and
come up and driven her forth. How easy for her to escape from la mère
Gaston if she chose! And yet--would she dare, even at the bidding
of the tiger, to introduce a stranger into the flat? Unnecessary,
he reflected. There were a hundred accommodating dubious interiors
between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square. He understood; he
neither accused nor pardoned; but he was utterly revolted, and wounded
not merely in his soul but in the most sensitive part of his
soul--his pride. He called himself by the worst epithet of opprobrium:
Simpleton! The bold and sudden stroke had now become the fatuous
caprice of a damned fool. Had he, at his age, been capable of
overlooking the elementary axiom: once a wrong 'un, always a wrong
'un? Had he believed in reclamation? He laughed out his disgust ...

No! He did not blame her. To blame her would have been ridiculous. She
was only what she was, and not worth blame. She was nothing at all.
How right, how cursedly right, were the respectable dames in the
accent of amused indifference which they employed for their precious
phrase, "the pretty ladies"! Well, he would treat her generously--but
through his lawyer.

And in the desolation, the dismay, the disillusion, the nausea which
ravaged him he was unwillingly conscious of fragments of thoughts that
flickered like transient flames far below in the deep mines of his