“Laura, did he strike you?”

“No, no,” said Laura with greater energy than she had yet shown.  Lawrence drew a breath of relief.  He had felt a horrible fear that her faintness might be the result of a blow or a fall.  “Oh, how could you think that?  All he did was to put his hand out flat against my chest and push me back.”

“But your dress is torn” said Lawrence, sickening over the question yet feeling that he must know all.

“His ring caught in it.  These crepe de chine dresses tear if you look at them.”

“Well, did you give it up after that?”

“No, oh no:  I never can be angry with Berns because it—­it isn’t Berns really,” she glanced up at Lawrence with her pleading eyes.  “It’s a possession of the devil.  He suffers so frightfully, Lawrence:  he never ceases to rebel, and no one can soothe him but me.  So that I hadn’t the heart to leave him.  You’ll think it poor-spirited of me, but I—­I can’t help loving the real Bernard, a Bernard you’ve never seen.  So I waited because—­I never can make Yvonne understand—­I am so sorry for him:  he hurts himself more than me—­”

Lawrence started.  The echo struck strangely on his ear.  “I understand.”

“You always understand.  So I tried again; I said:  would he at least let me go to my room and change my clothes and get some money.  But he said it was your turn to buy my clothes now.  When I’d convinced myself that he was unapproachable, I thought of trying to get in by a side door or through the kitchen.  It would have been ignominious, but anything was better than standing on the steps; Bernard was talking at the top of his voice, and the maids were at the bedroom windows overhead.  I didn’t look up but I saw the curtains flutter.”

“Servants don’t matter much.  But you did quite right.  What happened?”

“He held me by the arm as I turned to go, and told me that all the doors and windows were locked and that he had given orders not to admit me:  not to admit either of us.”

“Either you or—?”

“Yourself.  If we liked to stay out all night together we could stay out for ever.”

“And then?”

“Don’t ask me.”  She shuddered and drooped, and the colour came up into her face, a rose-pink patch of fever.  “I can’t remember any more.”

“He must have gone raving mad.”

“He is not mad, Lawrence.  But he has indulged his imagination too long and now it has the mastery of him,” said Laura slowly.  “It’s fatal to do that.  ’Withstand the beginning:  after-remedies come too late.’  Ever since you came he’s been nursing an imaginary jealousy of you:  though he knew it was imaginary, he indulged it as though it were genuine:  and now it has turned on him and got him by the throat.  Oh, he is so unhappy?  But what can I do?”

What, indeed?  Lawrence, recalling Val’s warning, subdued a curse or a groan.  “A house full of the materials for an explosion.”  And he had lived in that house—­blind fool!—­week after week and had noticed nothing!  “Why—­why did no one warn me before?” he stammered.  “My poor Laura!  Why didn’t you send me away?”