I had no answer.

"Where is she now?"

"Oh! does it matter to you?... Look here, Marion! This--this I didn't
anticipate. I didn't mean this thing to smash down on you like this.
But, you know, something had to happen. I'm sorry--sorry to the bottom
of my heart that things have come to this between us. But indeed, I'm
taken by surprise. I don't know where I am--I don't know how we got
here. Things took me by surprise. I found myself alone with her one day.
I kissed her. I went on. It seemed stupid to go back. And besides--why
should I have gone back? Why should I? From first to last, I've hardly
thought of it as touching you.... Damn!"

She scrutinised my face, and pulled at the ball-fringe of the little
table beside her.

"To think of it," she said. "I don't believe I can ever touch you
again."

We kept a long silence. I was only beginning to realise in the most
superficial way the immense catastrophe that had happened between us.
Enormous issues had rushed upon us. I felt unprepared and altogether
inadequate. I was unreasonably angry. There came a rush of stupid
expressions to my mind that my rising sense of the supreme importance
of the moment saved me from saying. The gap of silence widened until
it threatened to become the vast memorable margin of some one among a
thousand trivial possibilities of speech that would vex our relations
for ever.