“There was no hardness in him, Wolf, no ambition, no pride, no independence! He didn’t know what it was to feel alone! He sucked up women’s lifeblood like an incubus; and nothing would make him confess it⁠—nothing would make him say, ‘Yes⁠ ⁠… it is outrageous!’ He justified himself all the time.”

Wolf looked away from those fierce brown eyes, out of Mrs. Herbert’s front-room window, into the cold iron-coloured sky, a sky swept clean of all softness by the east wind.

“I’m not going to quarrel with you, Mother, about him,” he said heavily. “I suppose I’m more like him than like you. But you’re wrong if you don’t think I feel alone!”