Virginia Woolf: Night and Day

29. CHAPTER XXIX (continued)

"She wished even to persecute Cassandra!" Katharine burst out, not listening to him. "She threatened to speak to her. She's capable of it--she's capable of anything!"

"Mrs. Milvain is not tactful, I know, but you exaggerate, Katharine. People are talking about us. She was right to tell us. It only confirms my own feeling--the position is monstrous."

At length Katharine realized some part of what he meant.

"You don't mean that this influences you, William?" she asked in amazement.

"It does," he said, flushing. "It's intensely disagreeable to me. I can't endure that people should gossip about us. And then there's your cousin--Cassandra--" He paused in embarrassment.

"I came here this morning, Katharine," he resumed, with a change of voice, "to ask you to forget my folly, my bad temper, my inconceivable behavior. I came, Katharine, to ask whether we can't return to the position we were in before this--this season of lunacy. Will you take me back, Katharine, once more and for ever?"

No doubt her beauty, intensified by emotion and enhanced by the flowers of bright color and strange shape which she carried wrought upon Rodney, and had its share in bestowing upon her the old romance. But a less noble passion worked in him, too; he was inflamed by jealousy. His tentative offer of affection had been rudely and, as he thought, completely repulsed by Cassandra on the preceding day. Denham's confession was in his mind. And ultimately, Katharine's dominion over him was of the sort that the fevers of the night cannot exorcise.

"I was as much to blame as you were yesterday," she said gently, disregarding his question. "I confess, William, the sight of you and Cassandra together made me jealous, and I couldn't control myself. I laughed at you, I know."

"You jealous!" William exclaimed. "l assure you, Katharine, you've not the slightest reason to be jealous. Cassandra dislikes me, so far as she feels about me at all. I was foolish enough to try to explain the nature of our relationship. I couldn't resist telling her what I supposed myself to feel for her. She refused to listen, very rightly. But she left me in no doubt of her scorn."