Suddenly a wave almost of physical nausea swept over Amelie. She had all the stainless purity of thought of a girl who has been married young to the first man she has ever loved, and in the first moment of her knowing definitely that Bertie at one time had made love to this woman she felt sick—simply sick. She rose from her chair, and put on her gloves, while Dorothy watched her, conscious that some emotion which she herself had so long forgotten, had she ever experienced it, that she no longer comprehended it, mastered her. And, with the best intentions in the world, not recognising that any further allusion to her own friendship with Bertie would only further disgust and sicken his wife, she said:
' That was all. There was never anything more—anything wrong.'
Amelie turned on her a marble face.
' How am I to know?' she asked. ' What prevented it? His morals, the lyrical letter-writer, or yours?'
Dorothy felt a strong though momentary impulse to box her ears. It would probably have been a good thing if she had yielded to it. She herself had felt for Amelie a sort of wondering pity that a matter so long dead could possibly be bitter still, and, acting under that, she had done her best to reassure her. But Amelie had slapped that generous impulse in the face; she had also chosen to express doubt as to the truth of what she had been told; and a rather more pronounced felinity awoke in Dorothy's face.
' You had better go and talk it out with Bertie,' she said. ' Ask him to repeat what he remembers of that letter. He is sure to have some recollection of it even now that he is so happily married. You can then draw your own conclusions, and, as far as I am concerned, you are perfectly free to do so. Oh yes, and tell him that I constantly use the dressing-bag he so kindly returned, and think of him.'
Amelie went out, feeling as if her world had fallen in ruins
