. . . Damn it he knew me! . . . What's vulgarity to me, Sylvia Tietjens, born Satterthwaite? I do what I want and that's good enough for anyone. Except a priest. Vulgarity! I wonder mother could be so obtuse. If I am vulgar I'm vulgar with a purpose. Then it's not vulgarity. It may be vice. Or viciousness. . . . But if you commit a mortal sin with your eyes open it's not vulgarity. . . . You chance hell fire for ever. . . . Good enough!
The weariness sank over her again and the sense of the father's presence. . . . She was back again in Lobscheid, thirty-six hours free of Perowne with the father and her mother in the dim sitting-room, all antlers, candle-lit, with the father's shadow waving over the pitchpine walls and ceilings. . . . It was a bewitched place, in the deep forest of Germany. The father himself said it was the last place in Europe to be Christianized. Or perhaps it was never Christianized. . . . That was perhaps why those people, the Germans, coming from those deep, devil-infested woods, did all these wickednesses. Or maybe they were not wicked. . . . One would never know properly. . . . But maybe the father had put a spell on her. . . . His words had never been out of her mind, much. . . . At the back of her brain, as the saying was. . . .
Some man drifted near her and said:
"How do you do, Mrs Tietjens? Who would have thought of seeing you here?"
She answered:
"I have to look after Christopher now and then." He remained hanging over her with a schoolboy grin for a minute, then he drifted away as an object sinks
