“What’s this, Wolf Solent?⁠ ⁠… What’s this, you lumpish, mock-Platonic, well-cuckolded ass? Ash-tree! Ash-tree!” Why had he been allowed by the justice of things to deny himself a single embrace with Christie, only to come home at a quarter past nine and find a lit candle in Gerda’s bedroom? Platonic cuckold! That was just what he was.⁠ ⁠… Not even Platonic⁠ ⁠… for Christie despised that word.⁠ ⁠… Mock-Platonic cuckold! Oh, it was all coming back! The knot in his mind was tying itself up again⁠—tight⁠—tight⁠—tight! He continued to lean against the tree in the position of an animal that is butting with its skull against some immovable obstacle.

And then the Waterloo-steps’ eye, the fish’s eye, the snake’s eye, the slaughtered pig’s eye, the eye of a caged lark he had seen once as a child in St. Mary’s Street, Weymouth, all seemed to melt strangely together⁠—all seemed to peer out at him from the heart of the tree-trunk against which he was butting with his skull.