"Then what _am_ I to do?" she said weakly, letting her hands drop. "I've
no one to tell me but you."
"And I lie to you! God knows what we're going to do. I've lied again
about the money. I never wrote and told the Pater be damned to his
money! There'll be two weeks waiting for me at the G.P.O. now. Why did
you believe me?"
"Louis--listen to me. I thought you were giving yourself a bad name and
hanging yourself. I thought if you sponged out all thought of drink from
your mind you'd be cured."
There was a gloomy silence. At last he burst out impatiently.
"Why aren't women taught elementary psychology before they get married?
That is very good treatment for anyone who has a scrap of moral fibre in
him. But I haven't. It won't work with me. You mustn't trust me. I'm a
man with a castrated soul, Marcella. I've killed the active part of me
by drinking and lying and slacking. You've got to treat me like a kid or
a lunatic. I am one, really--there, don't look frightened, but it's
true--Listen, old girl. Keep me locked up. I mean it, seriously. If I
can be forcibly kept off the blasted stuff I'll get some sort of
perspective. Now everything looks wobbly to me. Then, when I've got the
drink out, you've to graft something on to me. Why in hell's name didn't
I marry a girl who knew medicine? Don't you know that if a great chunk
of skin is burnt off anyone, more is grafted on?"
She nodded, her eyes wide with terror.
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