Afraid of being conspicuous he
had refused; she had ordered him to get it. People behind had hissed
"Hush" indignantly and finally Violet, with a contemptuous smile, had
bought programmes and chocolates for herself and the sister, cutting
Louis dead.
But whisky transformed him from a twitching neurotic into a
megalomaniac. He imagined that every woman he met was in love with him
indecently and physically; without whisky he saw women in veils and
shrouds; whisky made him see them with their clothes off, their eyes
full of lewd suggestion. Even to the elderly suburban ladies who visited
his mother he was tipsily improper. To find a girl like Marcella, who
did not put him either in a fever or a panic of sexuality was supremely
reassuring: she seemed to him like a nice man friend might be--though he
never had been able to acquire a man friend. He was intensely grateful
to her for marrying him: he was not her lover; he was her dependent: he
was treating her as he might have treated the old Dean at the hospital,
or as her father had treated God. But--his conventional sense told him
to kiss her and make her "just a girl."
He took both her hands in his and drew her towards him. Her eyes, which
began by being startled, grew suddenly soft, as his face came close to
hers and his eyes looked into hers for a wavering second before they
dropped awkwardly and looked at her cheek.
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