That baffled,
MULISH look--priggish--solemn! Oh! it's strange the stuff a poor
woman has to bring into the world. But you'll do nothing. I know
you'll do nothing. You'll stand everything. You--you Cuckold! And
she'll drive by me, she'll pass me in theatres with the money that
ought to have been mine! Oh! Oh!"
She dabbed her handkerchief from one swimming eye to the other. But
she went on talking. Faster and faster, less and less coherently;
more and more wildly abusive. Presently in a brief pause of the
storm Benham sighed profoundly. . . .
It brought the scene to a painful end. . . .
For weeks her distress pursued and perplexed him.
He had an extraordinary persuasion that in some obscure way he was
in default, that he was to blame for her distress, that he owed her--
he could never define what he owed her.
And yet, what on earth was one to do?
And something his mother had said gave him the odd idea that he had
misjudged his father, that he had missed depths of perplexed and
kindred goodwill. He went down to see him before he returned to
India.
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