“No:  after going so far, you owe me a reply.”

“Well then, I’ve never been able to see any other reason.”

“Oh?  Bernard’s my cousin.”

“Since you will have it, Hyde, I can’t see you burying yourself in a country village out of cousinly affection.  You said you’d stay as long as you were comfortable.  Well, it won’t be comfortable now!  I’m not presuming to judge you.  I’ve no idea what your ethical or social standards are.  Quite likely you would consider yourself justified in taking away your cousin’s wife.  Some modern professors and people who write about social questions would say, wouldn’t they, that she ought to be able to divorce him:  that a marriage which can’t be fruitful ought not to be a binding tie?  I’ve never got up the subject because for me it’s settled out of hand on religious grounds, but they may not influence you, nor perhaps would the other possible deterrent, pity for the weak—­if one can call Bernard weak.  It would be an impertinence for me to judge you by my code, when perhaps your own is pure social expediency—­which would certainly be better served if Mrs. Clowes went to you.”

“Assuming that you’ve correctly defined my standard—­why should I go?”

Val shrugged his shoulders.  “You know well enough.  Because Mrs. Clowes is old-fashioned; her duty to Bernard is the ruling force in her life, and you could never make her give him up.  Or if you did she wouldn’t live long enough for you to grow tired of her—­ it would break her heart.”

“Really?” said Lawrence.  “Before I grew tired of her?”

He had never been so angry in his life.  To be brought to book at all was bad enough, but what rankled worst was the nature of the charge.  Sometimes it takes a false accusation to make a man realize the esteem in which he is held, the opinions which others attribute to him and which perhaps, without examining them too closely, he has allowed to pass for his own.  Lawrence had indulged in plenty of loose talk about Nietzschean ethics and the danger of altruism and the social inexpediency of sacrificing the strong for the weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val himself could have held a more conservative view.  He, take advantage of a cripple?  He commit a breach of hospitality?  He sneak into Wanhope as his cousin’s friend to corrupt his cousin’s wife?  What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had never been to his taste.  Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura, have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of which Val accused him he knew himself to be incapable.

“Really?” he said, looking down at Val out of his wide black eyes, so like Bernard’s except that they concealed all that Bernard revealed.  “So now we understand each other.  I know why you want me to go and you know why I want to stay.”

“If I’ve done you an injustice I’m sorry for it.”