I released her. “You’re not worth killing,” I said. I went towards the door.

“Don’t you want to know who it was, Joe?” She had folded her arms again: somehow her face seemed to have fallen in round the mouth.

“I don’t need to ask,” I said. “You must have had a lot of quiet fun this last four years, mustn’t you? Watching her with the Pudding-Faced Bawlers. Watching her with her sisters—”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” she said, wearily. “It only started again this May. It wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t been for you. I tried, really tried to love you.” She stopped. “No, I didn’t try. I didn’t have to try. Because I did love you. I tried to make you love me. But you couldn’t because that isn’t you.” She frowned. “It’s like explaining colour to a blind man.”

“All right,” I said. “You tried not to be a whore. For four years. Nearly five, in fact. That’s a long time to stay faithful to your husband, so at the first excuse you went back to Mark. You’ve done well, haven’t you? Nearly five years.”

Then I remembered something. For a moment I could not speak.

“You bitch,” I said hoarsely. “You’re a bigger whore than I thought. It isn’t Mark. Can’t you ever tell me the truth? Who is it? Who is it?”

“I think you’re going mad,” she said. “Why shouldn’t it be Mark?”

“He only came to live in Warley three years ago.”

“You wouldn’t remember my visiting him and Sybil the year before Barbara was born, would you? When I went to stay with Aunt Cora in Hampstead? You don’t remember that row we had before I went? And the pretty things you said to me.”

“That’s all over and done with,” I said.

“Well, so’s this. Or it would have been but for you. He doesn’t know anything about it.”

“I bet it was easy,” I said. “I bet he just had to ask the first time he met you. Or did he bother to ask? Did he just sniff at you like a dog at a bitch?” I became more explicit; but her expression was merely of detached amusement.

“It’s strange,” she said. “You talk of Mark as if I’d met him for the first time five years ago. But I’ve known him for fifteen years. You don’t remember anything at all about me, do you? I’m just an object, a thing, I’m not supposed to have a mind of my own. Shall I tell you what the thing did?” She was breathing hard. “Shall I tell you what the thing did when its feelings were hurt? How often and where?”