Explore "The Woman Beater" by Israel Zangwill on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Their subsequent correspondence was only the more amorous. The reason / she had fled from the hotel, she explained, was that she could not / endure the night in those stuffy quarters. He consoled himself with / the hope of seeing much of her during the Long Vacation. He did see / her once at her own reception, but this time her husband wandered / about the two rooms. The cosy corner was impossible, and they could / only manage to gasp out a few mutual endearments amid the buzz and / movement, and to arrange a _rendezvous_ for the end of July. When the / day came, he received a heart-broken letter, stating that her husband / had borne her away to Goodwood. In a postscript she informed him that / "Quicksilver was a sure thing. " Much correspondence passed without / another meeting being effected, and he lent her five pounds to pay a / debt of honour incurred through her husband's "absurd confidence in / Quicksilver. " A week later this horsey husband of hers brought her on / to Brighton for the races there, and hither John Lefolle flew. But her / husband shadowed her, and he could only lift his hat to her as they / passed each other on the Lawns. Sometimes he saw her sitting pensively / on a chair while her lord and thrasher perused a pink sporting-paper.
Such tantalising proximity raised their correspondence through the / Hove Post Office to fever heat. Life apart, they felt, was impossible, / and, removed from the sobering influences of his cap and gown, John / Lefolle dreamed of throwing everything to the winds. His literary / reputation had opened out a new career. The Winifred lyrics alone had / brought in a tidy sum, and though he had expended that and more / on despatches of flowers and trifles to her, yet he felt this / extravagance would become extinguished under daily companionship, / and the poems provoked by her charms would go far towards their daily / maintenance. Yes, he could throw up the University. He would rescue / her from this bully, this gentleman bruiser. They would live openly / and nobly in the world's eye. A poet was not even expected to be / conventional.