Before the Fact Read Online Free PDF

I am, I can tell you. They’re simply out to rob us at every turn; it gives me a lot of pleasure to get our own back for once.”
    “But it – it’s dishonest, darling,” Lina said, really distressed.
    “Dishonest my hat! I’ve been robbed of a good deal more than fifty francs since we came here. That’s a little back, on account.” He looked down at her, with the mischievous schoolboy’s smile that so peculiarly belonged to him. “You mustn’t be so punctilious, you infant. Besides, it makes me feel good.”
    “To cheat a waiter out of fifty francs?”
    “You funny little thing!” said Johnnie indulgently.
    But Lina did not smile back.
    After lunch Johnnie took her to the best shoe shop in Paris and bought her the most expensive pair of mules in the place, decorated with absurd and delectable flame-coloured feathers. She had mentioned, just by chance, in their bedroom that morning that she really must get a pair of mules before they left Paris.
    She had forgotten all about the fifty francs before they left the shop.
    Johnnie was wonderful.
2
    On the whole Lina blissfully enjoyed her honeymoon.
    Johnnie was perfect: attentive, affectionate, and patient. They did not have a single cross word, and they laughed and talked inordinately. For the first time in her life Lina found herself able to talk without reserve, and she poured herself out in a flood of words which Johnnie received with at any rate apparently close attention; though from some of his irrelevancies which occasionally followed, Lina was not quite sure whether he had altogether appreciated all the subtler points she had been trying to make. But the mere talking cleared her mind of a lot of lumber that had been accumulating for years.
    For the first week or two she had tortured herself with doubt as to whether she would ever make a satisfactory wife at all.
    She was desperately anxious to find, and to give, complete fulfilment in marriage; but, try as she might at first, she simply could not see what all the fuss was about. It all seemed to her, to say the least, remarkably overrated. With characteristic despair she had decided within the first three days that she never would be satisfactory; that there was something lacking in her which would make her always useless as a wife. It never occurred to her that the conflicting emotions which possessed her might be something that she was sharing with every other bride that had ever been. Her case was unique. No one before could ever have experienced feelings so bewilderingly contradictory and so intense.
    Johnnie was very kind to her, and very gentle, and her adoration for him increased in ratio with the conviction of her own insufficiency. The knowledge that he must be finding her so inadequate, though he never even hinted as much, distressed her unbearably. When he was asleep she lay and cried for hours by his side. Always she had supposed herself passionate; now, put to the test, it appeared that she was not; worse, she could not even begin to understand what passion was. It became clear to her that she had not distinguished between mental and physical passion, taking it for granted that the presence of the one implied the possession of the other. As a wife it was plain that she could never be a success.
    Previous experience reinforced this pessimism. She thought she realized now why she had never been approached in this way before. Other men had instinctively recognized her inadequacy. Only Johnnie had been chivalrously mistaken.
    She tried to say something of all this to Johnnie, and to apologize for her shortcomings; but Johnnie did not seem to understand what was worrying her. It was borne in upon her that Johnnie could not be quite so perceptive, nor even quite so sensitive, as she had imagined. The ideal lover should know the inside of his mistress’s mind as well as he knows his own; for how otherwise can he anticipate her thoughts and fulfil her wishes in advance? Johnnie either did not realize