He tried to master the sudden anger that flared up in him at such a charge. “You’ll only be sorry later, Ethel, if you begin to use words like that,” he said. “There’s no such thing as perversion, anyhow,” he added; “everything is either normal, hypo, or hyper. If I’ve learned anything at all through this, I’ve learned that much. . . .”

“What is it going to mean? . . .”

“Nothing. I understand Cliff now and the way I felt about him. But since last night, somehow it’s all different. I don’t want that in my life any more than Cliff does. Naturally I still like him and will always like him—there’s no reason why I shouldn’t.”

“I mean to us. . . .”

“I know it’s hard for you to take,” he said. “It was just as hard for me, harder, at first. I didn’t think it was possible. But don’t you see? If it is possible—”

“Stop! I won’t listen to this.”

“Ethel, you’ll have to understand! I’ll take the blame for it, if you like, if we must ‘blame’ anyone—but it isn’t my fault, really it isn’t. This thing didn’t occur willfully. These few days in Sconset I’ve been all at sea—”

“Few days,” she said hollowly. “Do you honestly think it’s been just these ‘few days’?”

“Perhaps not; you may be right. Perhaps it’s been due to happen for a long time, I honestly don’t know; and it took Cliff to bring it out. Maybe it’s a definite part of me, part of my nature. But till now, my love for you has kept it in the background where it belongs. Our love can do it again.”

“Love. Do you think you can use me as a—a—”

“Don’t say something you’ll be sorry for,” he interrupted. “I love you, Ethel. I believe you love me. I don’t think anything else matters. Does it?—Is Cliff more important than we are? Not to me he isn’t.”

“You were always good at words,” she said. “These are just more of the same. . . .”

Ordinarily he would not have kept on so long. If an honest admission did no good, then forty such admissions would be futile. But the dilemma had become Ethel’s almost more than his own. Out of a sense of guilt he felt impelled to continue, in a desperate effort to communicate to her his fullest understanding of the situation. Boldly, he even resorted to sarcasm now, as if by this device he might restore the argument to the “normal”—to one of the common quarrels of marriage. “Okay,” he said, “if you’d rather I said nothing. I could have kept it to myself, you know. Most men would have.”

“Didn’t you? Didn’t you?”