If I were trying to trap you for the sake of your money,
could I play a stronger card than by seeming anxious to give you
up? If I were to give in now, sooner or later that suspicion would
come to you. You would drive it away. You might drive it away a
hundred times. But you couldn't kill it. In the end it would beat
you.'
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
'I can't argue.'
'Nor can I. I can only put very badly things which I know are
true. Come and pack.'
'I'll do it. Don't you bother.'
'Nonsense! No man knows how to pack properly.'
He followed her to his room, pulled out his suitcase, the symbol
of the end of all things, watched her as she flitted about, the
sun shining on her hair as she passed and repassed the window. She
was picking things up, folding them, packing them. Bill looked on
with an aching sense of desolation. It was all so friendly, so
intimate, so exactly as it would have been if she were his wife.
It seemed to him needlessly cruel that she should be playing on
this note of domesticity at the moment when she was barring for
ever the door between him and happiness. He rebelled helplessly
against the attitude she had taken. He had not thought it all out,
as she had done. It was folly, insanity, ruining their two lives
like this for a scruple.
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