“It’s he who’s doing all this to me! You needn’t think that you could do it alone! It’s both of you. It’s both! But, oh, you great, heavy, stupid, clumsy lumps of selfishness.⁠ ⁠… Something, some day, will make you⁠ ⁠… I don’t know what.⁠ ⁠… Something, one day⁠ ⁠… will make you.⁠ ⁠… Something will do it⁠ ⁠… one day⁠ ⁠… and I shall be glad.⁠ ⁠… Don’t expect anything else. I shall be glad!”

She drew in her arm and buried her face in the sofa, her body heaving with long, dry, husky sobs.

Wolf surveyed her form as she lay there, one strong leg exposed as high as the knee, and one disarranged tress of wavy grey hair hanging across her cheek. And it came over him with a wave of remorseful shame that this formidable being, so grotesquely reduced, was the actual human animal out of whose entrails he had been dragged into light and air.