"It isn't my fault if I have," he reminded her.

"In a sense it is," she insisted. "The woman in your life should be the
most beautiful part of it. You chose to make her the stepping-stone to
your ambition. Consequently you go through life hungry, you wait till
you almost starve, and then suddenly the greatest things in the world
which lie to your hand seem like baubles."

"You are hideously logical," he grumbled.

They were walking slower now, within a few yards of the entrance to her
flat. Both of them were a little disturbed,--she, full as she was with
all the generous impulses of sensuous humanity, intensely awakened,
intensely sympathetic.

"Tell me, where is your wife?" she asked.

"In America."

"It is hopeless with her?"

"Utterly and irretrievably hopeless."

"It has been for long?"

"For years."

"And for the sake of your principles," she went on, almost angrily,
"your stupid, canonical and dry-as-dust little principles, you've let
your life shrivel up."