She did not quite know why, but suddenly thinking of Charlie Townsend he seemed to her an abject fool.
"It was a terrible risk you were taking," she answered. "With your sensitive conscience I wonder if you could ever have forgiven yourself if I had died."
"Well, you haven't.
You've thrived on it."
"I've never felt better in my life."
She had an instinct to throw herself on the mercy of his humour.
After all they had gone through, when they were living amid these scenes of horror and desolation, it seemed inept to attach importance to the ridiculous act of fornication.* When death stood round the corner, taking lives like a gardener digging up potatoes, it was foolishness to care what dirty things this person or that did with his body.
If she could only make him realize how little Charlie meant to her, so that now already she had difficulty in calling up his features to her imagination, and how entirely the love of him had passed out of her heart!
Because she had no feeling for Townsend the various acts she had committed with him had lost their significance.
She had regained her heart and what she had given of her body seemed not to matter a rap.
She was inclined to say to Walter:
"Look here, don't you think we've been silly long enough?
We've sulked with one another like children.
Why can't we kiss and be friends?
There's no reason why we shouldn't be friends just because we're not lovers."
He stood very still and the lamplight made the pallor of his impassive face startling.
She did not trust him; if she said the wrong thing he would turn upon her with such an icy sternness.
She knew by now his extreme sensitiveness, for which his acid irony was a protection, and how quickly he could close his heart if his feelings were hurt.
She had a moment's irritation at his stupidity.
Surely what troubled him most was the wound to his vanity: she vaguely realized that this is the hardest of all wounds to heal.
It was singular that men attached so much importance to their wives' faithfulness; when first she had gone with Charlie she had expected to feel quite different, a changed woman; but she had seemed to herself exactly the same, she had experienced only well-being and a greater vitality.
She wished now that she had been able to tell Walter that the child was his; the lie would have meant so little to her, and the assurance would have been so great a comfort to him.
And after all it might not be a lie: it was funny, that something in her heart which had prevented her from giving herself the benefit of the doubt. How silly men were!
Their part in procreation was so unimportant; it was the woman who carried the child through long months of uneasiness and bore it with pain, and yet a man because of his momentary connexion made such preposterous claims.
Why should that make any difference to him in his feeling towards the child?
Then Kitty's thoughts wandered to the child which she herself would bear; she thought of it not with emotion nor with a passion of maternity, but with an idle curiosity.
"I dare say you'd like to think it over a little," said Walter, breaking the long silence.
"Think what?"
He turned a little as if he were surprised.
"About when you want to go."
"But I don't want to go."
"Why not?"
"I like my work at the convent.
I think I'm making myself useful.
I should prefer to stay as long as you do."
"I think I should tell you that in your present condition you are probably more liable to catch any infection that happens to be about."
"I like the discreet way you put it," she smiled ironically.
"You're not staying for my sake?"
She hesitated.
He little knew that now the strongest emotion he excited in her, and the most unexpected, was pity.
"No.
You don't love me.
I often think I rather bore you."
"I shouldn't have thought you were the sort of person to put yourself out for a few stuffy nuns and a parcel of Chinese brats."
Her lips outlined a smile.
"I think it's rather unfair to despise me so much because you made such a mistake in your judgement of me, It's not my fault that you were such an ass."
"If you're determined to stay you are of course at liberty to do so."
"I'm sorry I can't give you the opportunity of being magnanimous*." She found it strangely hard to be quite serious with him. "As a matter of fact you're quite right, it's not only for the orphans that I'm staying: you see, I'm in the peculiar position that I haven't got a soul in the world that I can go to.
I know no one who wouldn't think me a nuisance.
I know no one who cares a row of pins if I'm alive or dead."