Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.  Though he yearned for Mildred so madly he despised her.  He thought to himself that there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.

Philip, burrowing as was his habit into the state of his feelings, discussing with himself continually his condition, came to the conclusion that he could only cure himself of his degrading passion by making Mildred his mistress.  It was sexual hunger that he suffered from, and if he could satisfy this he might free himself from the intolerable chains that bound him.  He knew that Mildred did not care for him at all in that way.  When he kissed her passionately she withdrew herself from him with instinctive distaste.  She had no sensuality.  Sometimes he had tried to make her jealous by talking of adventures in Paris, but they did not interest her; once or twice he had sat at other tables in the tea-shop and affected to flirt with the waitress who attended them, but she was entirely indifferent.  He could see that it was no pretence on her part.

“You didn’t mind my not sitting at one of your tables this afternoon?” he asked once, when he was walking to the station with her.  “Yours seemed to be all full.”

This was not a fact, but she did not contradict him.  Even if his desertion meant nothing to her he would have been grateful if she had pretended it did.  A reproach would have been balm to his soul.

“I think it’s silly of you to sit at the same table every day.  You ought to give the other girls a turn now and again.”

But the more he thought of it the more he was convinced that complete surrender on her part was his only way to freedom.  He was like a knight of old, metamorphosed by magic spells, who sought the potions which should restore him to his fair and proper form.  Philip had only one hope.  Mildred greatly desired to go to Paris.  To her, as to most English people, it was the centre of gaiety and fashion:  she had heard of the Magasin du Louvre, where you could get the very latest thing for about half the price you had to pay in London; a friend of hers had passed her honeymoon in Paris and had spent all day at the Louvre; and she and her husband, my dear, they never went to bed till six in the morning all the time they were there; the Moulin Rouge and I don’t know what all.  Philip did not care that if she yielded to his desires it would only be the unwilling price she paid for the gratification of her wish.  He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion.  He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.  He had plied her with liquor in the hope of exciting her, but she had no taste for wine; and though she liked him to order champagne because it looked well, she never drank more than half a glass.  She liked to leave untouched a large glass filled to the brim.