And she went into her room.

What was the matter with her? Albert wondered as he went up to town.
Was she passing through a crisis of some sort? Was she only just
beginning to realise that she was his wife?

He spent the whole day in town. In the evening he went to the theatre.
They played _Le monde ou l'on s'ennuit_. As he sat and watched platonic
love, the union of souls, unmasked and ridiculed, he felt as if a veil
of close meshed lies were being drawn from his reason; he smiled as he
saw the head of the charming beast peeping from underneath the card-board
wings of the stage-angel; he almost shed tears of amusement at his long,
long self-deception; he laughed at his folly. What filth and corruption
lay behind this hypocritical morality, this insane desire for
emancipation from healthy, natural instincts. It was the ascetic
teaching of idealism and Christianity which had implanted this germ
into the nineteenth century.

He felt ashamed! How could he have allowed himself to be duped all this
time!

There was still light in Helena's room as he passed her door on tip-toe
so as not to wake her. He heard her cough.

He went straight to bed, smoked his cigar and read his paper. He was
absorbed in an article on conscription, when all of a sudden Helena's
door was flung open, and footsteps and screams from the drawing-room
fell on his ears. He jumped up and rushed out of his room, believing
that the house was on fire.