The thought fascinated him: to break his life wide open. He'd let it
go, it was worthless to him, the companies and bonds and the woman and
children, the jog-trotting on fenced roads, the vain pretentions of the
country club, the petty grasping at the petticoats--where they were
worn--of variety. Lee wished that he could do this in the presence of
everyone he knew; he wanted to see their outraged faces, hear the
shocked expressions, as he insulted, demolished, all that they
worshipped. The blood, he found, had stopped; his hurt was relatively
unimportant. The fever of rebellion, of destruction, increased in him
until it was as violent, as blinding, as his earlier fury; and he went
at once in search of Fanny.
She had undressed, and, in a nightgown effectively drawn with blue
ribbons, she lay face down across the bottom of her bed. One shoulder,
immaculately white except for the leaden bruises of his fingers, was
bare, and an arm, from which her jewelled wrist watch had not been
removed, was outstretched. He stood above her, but, breathing faintly,
she made no sign of a consciousness of his presence.
"Fanny," he began, speaking with an effort of calmness out of his
laboring being, "this is all over for me. As I told you so many times,
I've had too much of it. It's yours, anyhow, and the children are
yours, and you may do what you like with the whole affair.
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