Page:Dark Hester.djvu/227

brain, and she had seen cruelty that had seared her. It was because of what we both had to hide from other people that we came to care so much for each other, at the first. We seemed, from the moment we saw each other, to understand. As for her lover, she wanted me to tell you, of course. And I refused. I knew what you would feel,’ Clive repeated, and on his sweet, pure lip she saw the echo of her own cruel irony.

‘You will admit — she has not so altered all the codes and symbols you inherit from me, obsolete as they are— you will admit that it is a natural feeling.’

‘Perfectly natural. Nothing could be more natural;—like all the rest of our primitive emotions. You see yourself as the pure and Hester as the impure woman.’

‘Do I?’ It seemed to her that Clive had thrown knives at her and that she felt them quivering in her throat and side.— All that suffering that he had hidden from her, his mother, and that Hester had understood at a glance.—‘Perhaps there is a meaning in the words, in spite of Hester’s code. Do you subscribe also to the modern doctrine of contemporaneity in love-affairs? Are you a completely complacent husband? If your wife had sad