She told him something of her own story, and then their common topics narrowed down very abruptly.  He found he could help her in several ways.  There is, unhappily, a disposition on the part of many people, who ought to know better, to regard a role played by Joseph during his earlier days in Egypt as a ridiculous one.  This point of view became very inopportunely dominant in Benham’s mind when he was lunching tete A tete with Mrs. Skelmersdale at her flat. . . .

The ensuing intimacy was of an entirely concealed and respectable nature, but a certain increased preoccupation in his manner set Lady Marayne thinking.  He had as a matter of fact been taken by surprise.

Still he perceived that it is no excuse for a man that he has been taken by surprise.  Surprises in one’s own conduct ought not to happen.  When they do happen then an aristocrat ought to stick to what he had done.  He was now in a subtle and complicated relationship to Mrs. Skelmersdale, a relationship in which her pride had become suddenly a matter of tremendous importance.  Once he had launched himself upon this affair, it was clear to him that he owed it to her never to humiliate her.  And to go back upon himself now would be a tremendous humiliation for her.  You see, he had helped her a little financially.  And she looked to him, she wanted him. . . .

She wasn’t, he knew, altogether respectable.  Indeed, poor dear, her ethical problems, already a little worn, made her seem at times anything but respectable.  He had met her first one evening at Jimmy Gluckstein’s when he was forming his opinion of Art.  Her manifest want of interest in pictures had attracted him.  And that had led to music.  And to the mention of a Clementi piano, that short, gentle, sad, old, little sort of piano people will insist upon calling a spinet, in her flat.

And so to this. . . .

It was very wonderful and delicious, this first indulgence of sense.

It was shabby and underhand.

The great god Pan is a glorious god. (And so was Swinburne.) And what can compare with the warmth of blood and the sheen of sunlit limbs?

But Priapus. . . .

She was the most subtle, delightful and tender of created beings.

She had amazing streaks of vulgarity.

And some astonishing friends.

Once she had seemed to lead the talk deliberately to money matters.

She loved him and desired him.  There was no doubt of it.

There was a curious effect about her as though when she went round the corner she would become somebody else.  And a curious recurrent feeling that round the corner there was somebody else.

He had an extraordinary feeling that his mother knew about this business.  This feeling came from nothing in her words or acts, but from some indefinable change in her eyes and bearing towards him.  But how could she know?