“I don't do it for you,” she said. “You go away.”

Her strange, lifted belly, big with his child! Had he no right to be there? He felt his presence a violation. Yet he had his right to be there. He went and sat on the bed.

She stopped dancing, and confronted him, again lifting her slim arms and twisting at her hair. Her nakedness hurt her, opposed to him.

“I can do as I like in my bedroom,” she cried. “Why do you interfere with me?”

And she slipped on a dressing-gown and crouched before the fire.

He was more at ease now she was covered up. The vision of her tormented him all the days of his life, as she had been then, a strange, exalted thing having no relation to himself.