It was no revulsion, no withering of his feeling for her; rather it was that the brutal fact had a burning quality to peel away the trimmings from what he felt.
He found himself groping back in his life before Ann came into it. Nothing quite the same had happened to him before. The perishing of his young desire had left him in a whirling excitement which contained less torture than this obsession of cold realization. Bereft now of all that had made his life good and pleasant and amusing, he could only appreciate Ann and the experience that lay before her, appreciate, but not understand. That was too horrible. She had been so dear to him; such a good, kind, true, brave little soul. The resentment that he could not altogether escape he visited on Rita, as Ann had from the first visited hers on Kilner.
Why should Kilner on the one hand, and Rita on the other, draw them apart? Why had they created nothing that could be shared outside themselves? Why should that which they had created destroy that which they had valued in their life together? Why--and he came firmly back to his real obsession--why should they have so isolated themselves that the natural consequence of their love, if love it were, should be an intrusion, a shock greater than they could bear?
He listened again. Ann's breathing seemed to tell that she was asleep. He crept in to her. She was awake. After what seemed an age, she said in a dry, weary voice:
"I keep trying to think what kind of a house you lived in."
"Oh, that?" He told her it was like a little house in some Gardens not far away.
Then in the same dry, weary voice she said:
"I have been trying to think what she felt when you left her."
"For God's sake," cried he, "for God's sake keep that out of it."
"I do try to, Renny, dear. But I can't help thinking about her sometimes when you're like that----"
"Don't talk about it, Ann, don't talk about it. Go to sleep."
"Kiss me, then. I couldn't go to sleep till you'd kissed me. Not to-night. It _is_ all right, isn't it?"
"I don't want to be a drag on you, Renny, dear. It _is_ a blessing we're not married, isn't it?"
"That's what I say. If it's right it can't stop, can it? If it's wrong, it must."
He kissed her to stop her talking. She sighed contentedly, slid her arm into his and pressed her face against his shoulder.