growing more and more crimson. All the evening at home--he went straight
to his rooms and remained there dinnerless--his cheek burned at intervals
as if it had been smitten. He didn't understand what had happened to
him, what trick had been played him, what treachery practised. "None,
none," he said to himself. "I've nothing to do with it. I'm out of
it--it's none of my business." But that bewildered murmur was followed
again and again by the incongruous ejaculation: "Was it a plan--was it a
plan?" Sometimes he cried to himself, breathless, "Have I been duped,
sold, swindled?" If at all, he was an absurd, an abject victim. It was
as if he hadn't lost her till now. He had renounced her, yes; but that
was another affair--that was a closed but not a locked door. Now he
seemed to see the door quite slammed in his face. Did he expect her to
wait--was she to give him his time like that: two years at a stretch? He
didn't know what he had expected--he only knew what he hadn't. It wasn't
this--it wasn't this. Mystification bitterness and wrath rose and boiled
in him when he thought of the deference, the devotion, the credulity with
which he had listened to St. George. The evening wore on and the light
was long; but even when it had darkened he remained without a lamp. He
had flung himself on the sofa, where he lay through the hours with his
eyes either closed or gazing at the gloom, in the attitude of a man
teaching himself to bear something, to bear having been made a fool of.
He had made it too easy--that idea passed over him like a hot wave.
Suddenly, as he heard eleven o'clock strike, he jumped up, remembering
what General Fancourt had said about his coming after dinner. He'd
go--he'd see her at least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He felt
as if some of the elements of a hard sum had been given him and the
others were wanting: he couldn't do his sum till he had got all his
figures.

He dressed and drove quickly, so that by half-past eleven he was at