Off you go
for three months at a time, sky-larking, shooting antelope, pigeon-
shooting, polo, and whatever. She sits here and minds the gardeners--she
whom you saw with the sun in her hair! Year in, year out it goes on. Now
here you are back from India. Good. You leave her for a year, and write to
her twice--then you say, Why, where would she have been if she hadn't had
something to do? The sun in her hair, hey? Love, my good chap! You don't
know how to spell the word. You ought not to touch her shoe-string. You're
not fit. By Gad, sir, and now I remember something! And it's the truth,
it's the bitter, naked, grinning truth." He did remember something. He saw
her curled-back lip--he saw her fierce resentful eyes. He heard her say
it: "I think he is like a beast. He wants to ravage me--like a beast."
"You've been judged, Nevile," he said. "You've done for yourself. And now
I'll go to bed."
Ingram's face was very cloudy. He looked for a moment like quarrelling.
"Do you mean to leave me like this?" he asked.
"Yes," said Chevenix, "I do. I don't want to stop and hear you protest
that you intend to marry her. Marry her! Why, man, if you'd meant to marry
her, you'd have posted home express from Marseilles the moment you heard
that you could do it.
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