He tapped Mrs. Herbert’s railings with his stick. “It’s not that I grudge Gerda any pleasure,” he thought. “It’s that I don’t like spectators at my pleasure. She’ll be just the same whatever Bob Weevil did. But he’ll always be there⁠ ⁠… hiding behind her thoughts like a rat behind a screen⁠ ⁠… and watching me when I touch her. He’ll be in her thoughts when I’m holding her. He’ll be always there. I shall be eating with him, sleeping with him. There’ll always be a slit in her thoughts through which his eye will be on me.”

He remembered how his mother had once come home in high spirits to their London flat, after a conversation with her cousin, Lord Carfax, and told him how this nobleman had explained to her his philosophy of free-love, and how barbarous it was to grow jealous and possessive when you were enamoured. “Jealous?” he thought. “Well! He’s more sociable than I am, the good Carfax. I like to be alone in my house⁠ ⁠… not to be peeped at by a third person from the back of my girl’s head!”