She had been wrong from the beginning, when she permitted Charles to visit her. She ought never to have done that. She had known that it was wrong even then, for she had been careful never to let her relations guess that Wendell was in town. She remembered her blushing discomfort when Mr. Hengist had discovered them together. If it had been right to entertain Wendell in her room she would have felt no discomfort.

He had said, You must have known. That was the truth. He had wanted to know what her game was. She had let him imagine that she wanted his love. Thinking it over carefully she realised that she had wanted it, or, at least, his admiration. She had liked to feel that he admired her so ardently, but she had wanted to keep him at arm’s length, worshipping. That was unfair, cheating again.

Another man would not have denounced her as Wendell had done, but Wendell was right in much that he said. Only she hadn’t realised what she was doing until he spread the facts before her eyes, and made her see.

In her overwrought condition she saw herself in her worst colours, and exaggerated her faults until it seemed to her that she had no virtue left, no honour or decency. In shame she thought, I almost believed that I loved Charles. If his love-making had been more gentle, if hot temper had not overmastered him, who knew but that she might have given way to his pleading, cheating herself into thinking that she loved him because she was lonely and helpless? In her innermost self she had speculated on her chance of happiness with such a man as Wendell. She must have been mad. If she had not been able to bear Stephen’s love, how could she have borne the passion of a man sensual where Stephen was controlled, brutal and crude where Stephen was gentle? The instant Wendell’s lips had touched hers she knew that she hated him, and was afraid. She had known before, when he had said things calculated to offend her. She had known it when he invaded her bedroom, and laughed at her intimate possessions. Only she had not chosen to acknowledge the instinctive dislike.

All those jokes Wendell had made. . . . She hadn’t understood them, but she had known that they were vulgar. He had thought her coarse enough to enjoy them from his lips because she had left her husband. Probably he put a false construction on that too.

That brought her back to Stephen. She saw now, in face of Wendell’s turbulent ardour, that Stephen had been exceptional in his treatment of her. It seemed funny to think that she had been afraid of him on that awful day of their quarrel and parting. She had thought him a monster; compared with Wendell he had been a lamb.