They stood facing each other without any formal greeting.

“Was that true that you wrote me?” he asked.

When she heard his voice Joanna’s vengeance passed. With his first syllable that part of her consummation was complete and she rendered up the ascendancy to him. As he watched her in cold fury she ceased to be the kestrel poised: she became instead the small bird that flutters close to the ground for its life. After all there was a justice in things: she admitted that rejoicing.

“Is it true?” Louis repeated.

“Yes,” she said. She dared not look at him.

“Well, of course you are free to do as you please,” – he struck out at her with venom, “and I suppose I’m hardly in the position to criticize. All I can say is that such a trick is the last thing I expected of you. Till I got your letter this morning, I didn’t know how well I had thought of you. No one in this world but yourself could have convinced me that all the time you had been carrying on with another man. Engaged to be married! Pah! I’m ashamed of you and still more ashamed of myself. Don’t you think it was going a bit out of your way to stab an old fool in the back like that? But what’s the use of talking? I’m sure I don’t know why I came here to see you. After all, as I’ve already said, your life is your own to do as you like with, and I’ve no doubt you have got some kind of satisfaction out of fooling me. You have certainly succeeded.”

Joanna, who had been very white in the face at the beginning of this speech, was red before it was finished. She sat down heavily on the sofa and now her eyes never left Louis. But he would not look at her now. Such pain as this she had not expected.

“Louis,” she said, “say what you like to me, but that about fooling you, about carrying on with Lawrence isn’t true, and you certainly are a fool if you believe it. He never made love to me till Saturday, or perhaps I made love to him. Something drove me to it. You drove me to it. But till then I hadn’t the faintest idea.”

Louis had to believe this.

“I give it up then,” he said with an assumption of still greater indifference though before he spoke he had covertly scrutinized the quivering girl. “You are all the more incomprehensible to me.”

“What’s the meaning of it all,” he continued more warmly. “Can you tell me? I promise I’ll listen as patiently as I can, and try to understand. Here’s a woman. On Friday she swears she loves me, throws herself at my head, in fact! On Saturday she promises to marry some one else. There must, I suppose, be some reason? Is it that marriage is so greatly to be coveted? I thought you agreed with me about that. Didn’t you tell me one day of your own accord —?”