“I took care of that, Larry.”

“You?  You’d no right to interfere with my affairs.”

“Hadn’t I?  Not after living with you seven years?”

“If you’d lived with me seven centuries you’d have had no right to try to keep a man back from the Army.”

“I’m trying to keep a man’s brain for my country.”

“You lie.  It’s my body you’re trying to keep for yourself.  As you did when I was going to Ireland.”

“Oh, then—­I tried to stop you from being a traitor to England.  They’d have hanged you, my dear, for that.”

“Traitor?  It’s women like you that are the traitors.  My God, if there was a Government in this country that could govern, you’d be strung up in a row, all of you, and hanged.”

“No wonder you think you’re cut out for a soldier.  You’re cruel enough.”

“You’re cruel.  I’d rather be hanged than live with you a day longer after what you’ve done.  A Frenchman shot his wife the other day for less than that.”

“What was ’less than that’?” she said.

“She crawled after him to the camp, like a bitch.

“He sent her away and she came again and again.  He had to shoot her.”

“Was there nothing to be said for her?”

“There was.  She knew it was a big risk and she took it. You knew you were safe while you slimed my honour.”

“She loved him, and he shot her, and you think that’s a fine thing. How she must have loved him!”

“Men don’t want to be loved that way.  That’s the mistake you women will make.”

“It’s the way you’ve taught us.  I should like to know what other way you ever want us to love you?”

“The way Veronica loves Nicky, and Dorothy loved Drayton and Frances loves Anthony.”

“Dorothy?  She ruined Drayton’s life.”

“Men’s lives aren’t ruined that way.  And not all women’s.”

“Well, anyhow, if she’d loved him she’d have married him.  And Frances loves her children better than Anthony, and Anthony knows it.”

“Veronica, then.”

“Veronica doesn’t know what passion is.  The poor child’s anaemic.”

“Another mistake.  Veronica, and ‘children’ like Veronica have more passion in one eyelash than you have in your whole body.”

“It’s a pity,” she said, “you can’t have Veronica and her eyelashes instead of me.  She’s young and she’s pretty.”

He sighed with pain as her nerves lashed into his.

“That’s what it all amounts to—­your wanting to get out to the Front.  It’s what’s the matter with half the men who go there and pose as heroes.  They want to get rid of the wives—­and mistresses—­they’re tired of because the poor things aren’t young or pretty any longer.”

She dropped into the mourning voice that made him mad with her.  “I’m old—­old—­old.  And the War’s making me older every day, and uglier.  And I’m not married to you.  Talk of keeping you!  How can I keep you when I’m old and ugly?”