V

“Look here!” he said suddenly at last. “Why don’t you and I make a clean thing of it? Why don’t we marry?”

“But I am married,” she said amazed, and yet feeling nothing.

“Oh that!⁠ ⁠… he’ll divorce you all right.⁠ ⁠… Why don’t you and I marry? I want to marry. I know it would be the best thing for me⁠ ⁠… marry and lead a regular life. I lead the deuce of a life, simply tearing myself to pieces. Look here, you and I, we’re made for one another⁠ ⁠… hand and glove. Why don’t we marry? Do you see any reason why we shouldn’t?”

Connie looked at him amazed: and yet she felt nothing. These men, they were all alike, they left everything out. They just went off from the top of their heads as if they were squibs, and expected you to be carried heavenwards along with their own thin sticks.

“But I am married already,” she said. “I can’t leave Clifford, you know.”

“Why not? but why not?” he cried. “He’ll hardly know you’ve gone, after six months. He doesn’t know that anybody exists, except himself. Why the man has no use for you at all, as far as I can see; he’s entirely wrapped up in himself.”

Connie felt there was truth in this. But she also felt that Mick was hardly making a display of selflessness.

“Aren’t all men wrapped up in themselves?” she asked.

“Oh, more or less, I allow. A man’s got to be, to get through. But that’s not the point. The point is, what sort of a time can a man give a woman? Can he give her a damn good time, or can’t he? If he can’t he’s no right to the woman.⁠ ⁠…” He paused and gazed at her with his full, hazel eyes, almost hypnotic. “Now I consider,” he added, “I can give a woman the darndest good time she can ask for. I think I can guarantee myself.”