happiness or even envy it, and she had never believed Lawrence to be in love with herself, and yet this courtship that had gone on under her blind eyes produced in her a faint sense of irritation, of male defection that had made her look a little silly.  She was aware of it herself and faintly amused and faintly ashamed.  “My time for romantic adventure has gone by.  Oh my poor Berns, you forget that I’m thirty-six!”

Here was the authentic accent of truth.  Clowes heard it, but he had got beyond the point where a man is capable of saying “I was wrong, forgive me.”  At that moment he no longer desired Laura to be innocent, he would have preferred to justify himself by proving her guilty.  “Take your damned face out of this,” he said, enveloping her in an intensity of hate before which Laura’s delicate personality seemed to shrivel like a scorched leaf.  “Take it away before I kill you.”  He struck her hand from his wrist and dashed himself down on the pillow, his great arms and shoulders writhing above the marble waist like some fierce animal trapped by the loins.  “Oh, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it . . .”

“Oh dear, this is awful,” said Selincourt weakly.  He got up and stood in the doorway.  Despair is a terrible thing to watch.  Not even Lawrence dared go near Bernard.  It was the priest, inured to scenes of grief and rebellion, who came forward with the cold strong common sense of the Christian stoic.  “But you will have to stand it,” said Mr. Stafford sternly, “it is the Will of God and rebellion only makes it worse.  After all, thousands of men of all ranks have had to bear the same trial and with much less alleviation.  You know now that your wife is innocent and is prepared to forgive you.”  It did not strike Mr. Stafford that men like Bernard Clowes do not care to be forgiven by their wives.  There was no confessional box in Chilmark church.  “You have plenty of interests left and plenty of friends:  so long as you don’t alienate them by behaving in such an unmanly way.  Lift him, Val.—­ Come, Major Clowes, you’re torturing your wife.  This is cowardice—­”

“Like Val’s, eh?”

“Like—?”

“Like your precious Val behaved ten years ago.”  Clowes raised himself on his elbows.  “Aha! how’s that for a smack in the eye?”

“Val, my darling lad,” said Mr. Stafford, stumbling a little in his speech, “what—­what is this?”

“Poor chap!” Clowes gave his curt “Ha ha!” as he reached out a long arm to turn on all the lights.  “Who was that chap, Hercules was it, that pulled the temple on his own head?  By God, if my life’s gone to pieces, I’ll take some of you with me.  You, Val, I was always fond of you:  tell your daddy, or shall I, what you did in the Great War?”

“Bernard. . . .”

“Can’t stand it, eh?  But, like me, you’ll have to stand it.  Come, come, Val, this is cowardice—­”

“Lawrence, don’t touch him:  let it come.”