Her
spiritual advisers, I believe, forbade that. But she stipulated that
he must, in some way, perhaps symbolical, come back to her. She
was not very clear as to what she meant; probably she did not
know herself. Or perhaps she did.
There were moments when he seemed to be coming back to her;
there were moments when she was within a hair of yielding to her
physical passion for him. In just the same way, at moments, she
almost yielded to the temptation to denounce Mrs Basil to her
husband or Maisie Maidan to hers. She desired then to cause the
horrors and pains of public scandals. For, watching Edward more
intently and with more straining of ears than that which a cat
bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware of the progress of
his passion for each of these ladies. She was aware of it from the
way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she knew
from his tranquillities when he had received satisfactions.
At times she imagined herself to see more than was warranted. She
imagined that Edward was carrying on intrigues with other
women--with two at once; with three. For whole periods she
imagined him to be a monster of libertinage and she could not see
that he could have anything against her.
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