Anne’s interpretation of Majendie’s silence was not so favourable.  After being exposed to the pain and insult of Lady Cayley’s presence she had expected an immediate apology, and she inferred from its omission an unpardonable complicity.  Any compliance with the public toleration of that person would have been inexcusable, and he had been more than compliant, more than tolerant; he had been solicitous, attentive, deferent.  And deference to such a woman was insolence to his wife.  Anne was struck dumb by the shameless levity of the proceedings.  The two had behaved as if nothing had happened, or rather (she bitterly corrected herself) as if everything had happened, and might happen any day again (she inferred as much from his silence).  It would—­it would happen. Her intentions were, to Anne’s mind, unmistakable; that was plainly what she had come back for.  As to his intentions, Anne was not yet clear.  She had not made up her mind that they were bad; but she shuddered as she said to herself that he was “weak.”  He had come at that woman’s call; he had hung round her; he had waited on her at her bidding; at her bidding he had sat down beside her; he had listened to her, attracted, charmed, delighted; he had talked to her in the low voice Anne knew.  How could she tell what had or had not passed between them there, what intimacies, what recognitions, what resurrections of the corrupt, ill-buried past?  He had been “weak—­weak—­weak.”  Henceforth she must reckon with his weakness, and reckoning with it, she must keep him from that woman by any method, and at any cost!  It was something that he had the grace to be ashamed of himself (another inference from his silence).  No wonder, after that communion, if he was ashamed to look at his wife or speak to her.

He went straight to Edith when they reached home, and Anne went upstairs to her bedroom.

She had a great desire to be alone.  She wanted to pray, as she had prayed in that room at Scarby on the morning of her discovery.  Not that she felt in the least as she had felt then.  She was more profoundly wounded—­wounded beyond passion and beyond tears, calm and self-contained in her vision of the inevitable, the fore-ordained reality.  She had to get rid of her vision; it was impossible to live with it, impossible to live through another hour like the last.  Her desire to pray was a terrible, urgent longing that consumed her, impatient of every minute that kept her from her prayer.  She controlled it, moving slowly as she took off her outdoor clothes and put them decorously away; feeling that the force of her prayer gathered and mounted behind these minute obstructions and delays.