“Forget then!” she whispered. “Forget!”

He held her close, in the running warmth of the fire. The flame itself was like a forgetting. And her soft, warm, ripe weight! Slowly his blood turned, and began to ebb back into strength and reckless vigour again.

“And perhaps the women really wanted to be there and love you properly, only perhaps they couldn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t all their fault,” she said.

“I know it. Do you think I don’t know what a broken-backed snake that’s been trodden on I was myself!”

She clung to him suddenly. She had not wanted to start all this again. Yet some perversity had made her.

“But you’re not now,” she said. “You’re not that now: a broken-backed snake that’s been trodden on.”

“I don’t know what I am. There’s black days ahead.”