He left off coming home late so that he shouldn’t have to ask himself that question.

He wondered what—­if it really did happen—­he would do.  He wondered what other men did.  It never occurred to him that at twenty-two he was young to be considering this problem.

He rehearsed scenes that were only less fantastic than Orde-Jones’s face and figure, or that owed their element of fantasy to Orde-Jones’s face and figure.  He saw himself assaulting Orde-Jones with violence, dragging him out of Desmond’s studio, and throwing him downstairs.  He wondered what shapes that body and those legs and arms would take when they got to the bottom.  Perhaps they wouldn’t get to the bottom all at once.  He would hang on to the banisters.  He saw himself simply opening the door of the studio and ordering Orde-Jones to walk out of it.  Really, there would be nothing else for him to do but to walk out, and he would look an awful ass doing it.  He saw himself standing in the room and looking at them, and saying, “I’ve no intention of interrupting you.”  Perhaps Desmond would answer, “You’re not interrupting us.  We’ve finished all we had to say.”  And he would walk out and leave them there.  Not caring.

He wondered if he would look an awful ass doing it.

In the end, when it came, he hadn’t to do any of these things.  It happened very quietly and simply, early on a Sunday evening after he had got back from Eltham.  He had dined with Drayton and his people on Saturday, and stayed, for once, over-night, risking it.

Desmond was sitting on a cushion, on the floor, with her thin legs in their grey stockings slanting out in front of her.  She propped her chin on her hands.  Her thin, long face, between the great black ear-bosses, looked at him thoughtfully, without rancour.

“Nicky,” she said, “Alfred Orde-Jones slept with me last night.”

And he said, simply and quietly, “Very well, Desmond; then I shall leave you.  You can keep the flat, and I or my father will make you an allowance.  I shan’t divorce you, but I won’t live with you.”

“Why won’t you divorce me?” she said.

“Because I don’t want to drag you through the dirt.”

She laughed quietly.  “Dear Nicky,” she said, “how sweet and like you.  But don’t let’s have any more chivalrous idiocy.  I don’t want it.  I never did.” (She had forgotten that she had wanted it very badly once.  But Nicky did not remind her of that time.  No matter.  She didn’t want it now).  “Let’s look at the thing sensibly, without any rotten sentiment.  We’ve had some good times together, and we’ve had some bad times.  I’ll admit that when you married me you saved me from a very bad time.  That’s no reason why we should go on giving each other worse times indefinitely.  You seem to think I don’t want you to divorce me.  What else do you imagine Alfred came for last night?  Why we’ve been trying for it for the last three months.