He had searched for this, for the potency
in which lay the meaning of Cytherea, and he had found it. He had
looked for trouble, and it was his in the realization alone that he
could not, now, go home tomorrow morning.
* * * * *
In his room the tropical fruits and whiskey and cigarettes were by his
bed, the percolator ready for morning; and, stopping in his
preparations for the night, he mixed himself a drink and sat moodily
over it. What had happened downstairs seemed, more than anything else,
astounding; Mrs. Grove, Savina, had bewildered him with the power, the
bitterness, of her feeling. At the thought of her shaken with
passionate emotion his own nerves responded and the racing of his blood
was audible in his head. What had happened he didn't regret; dwelling
on it, the memory was almost as sharply pleasant as the reality; yet he
wasn't concerned with the present, but of the future--tomorrow.
He should, probably, get home late in the afternoon or in the evening;
and what he told himself was that he wouldn't come back to the Groves,
to Savina. The risk, the folly, was too great. Recalling his
conclusions about the attachments of men of his age, he had no illusion
about the possibly ideal character of an intimacy with William Grove's
wife; she, as well, had illuminated that beyond any obscurity of motive
or ultimate result.
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