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The question seemed almost idle, but she replied in a distinct,
emphatic voice, as if he were deaf and she had an important message
for him.
"No," she said. "I'm going to be married in the fall."
"Are you in love with this one?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "He's charming. And he and I are much more
alike than Jim and I were. He's a little bit of a bum and I am too. And
he's selfish, which is a good thing for me. Jim was so
good.
And so vul·
nerable. The back of his neck was just like a little boy's. I always remem·
her the back of his neck."
She spoke earnestly, but she saw that the man did not understand.
Nobody had ever understood-and she herself did not quite know-why
this image retained such power over her, why all her feelings of guilt and
shame had clustered around the picture of a boyish neck (the face had
not been boyish, but prematurely lined) bared like an early martyr's for
the sword. "How could I have done it?" she whispered to herself again,
as she still did nearly every day, and once again she was suffused with
horror.
"He was too good for me," she said at last. "I felt like his mother.
Nobody would ever have known it, but he needed to be protected."
That was it. That was what was so awful. Nobody would ever have
known. But she had crawled into his secret life and nestled there, like the
worm in the rose. How warm and succulent it had been! And when she
had devoured it all, she had gone away. "Oh God," she muttered under
her breath. It was no excuse that she had loved him. The worm indubit·
ably loves the rose.
Hurriedly, to distract herself, she began to talk about her love affairs.
First names with thumbnail descriptions rolled out till her whole life
sounded to her like a drugstore novel. And she found herself over-anxious
to explain to him why in each case the thing had not borne fruit, how
natural it was that she should have broken with John, how reasonable that
she should never have forgiven Ernest.
It
was as
if
she had been a prose–
cuting attorney drawing up a brief against each of her lovers, and, not
liking the position, she was relieved when the man interrupted her.
"Seems to me," he said, "you're still in love with that husband of
yours."
"Do you think so really?" she asked, leaning forward. "Why?"
Perhaps at last she had found him, the one she kept looking for, the one
who could tell her what she was really like. For this she had gone to
palmists and graphologists, hoping not for a dark man or a boat trip, but
for some quick blaze of gypsy insight that would show her her own linea·
ments.
If
she once knew, she had no doubt that she could behave per·
fectly; it was merely a question of finding out. How, she thought, can
you act upon your feelings if you don't know what they are? As a little
girl whispering to a young priest in the confessional she had sometimes
felt sure. The Church could classify it a,ll for you.
If
you talked or
