Julia sat beside Charles while he drove. Laurence and Mrs. Hurst were on the back seat. Julia listened to what Charles said, but half understanding him. Nothing was real to her but the self from which she wanted to escape, this self which she knew would always deceive her. When the car veered at a corner Charles and she were thrown together so that their shoulders touched. She knew that he leaned toward her to prolong the contact. The warmth of his body gave her no clear consciousness of him, and was a sustained reminder of inscrutable things with which he was not concerned. She despised the humility of his intellect. What attracted her was a kind of primitive cruelty which he tried to hide. She wanted to be consumed by his weakness, to be left nothing of herself. His lovemaking repelled her. She perceived his sentimentality toward womankind. All that he said was false because unrelated to his fundamental impulse which was to take without giving anything equivalent. She had somehow arrived at the conviction that only the things which hurt her were true. Charles's conception of beauty was childish. But she would not be afraid to abandon herself to the things in him he was ashamed of, which he could not control. When he was conquered, as she was, by the desires his intellect sought to evade, he would be caught in actuality. Neither of them could be deceived. She was impatient with Charles's deference to what he considered her finer feelings. There she found herself insulted by the shallowness of his respect.
Charles made the drive as long as he could, though he knew that his wife, with her prospect of guests at home, must be growing impatient. He kept, for the most part, in the park where it was easier to imagine that he and Julia were alone. In one place a hill cut off the city and dry grass rushed up before them against the cloudy sunset. Then there were masses of trees, green yet in the half darkness. The branches stirred their blackish foliage, and the copse had a breathing look. The last light broke through the shadowy clouds in metallic flames. When the city came into view again Julia thought that the tall houses were like the walls of a garden flowering with stars.