that perhaps even love might be subject to will
power, that a determined effort of will might bring it or banish it. She
had never really tested her will in that way in connexion with love. But
the time had come for the test to be made.

"Perhaps I can love Seymour!" she said to herself. "Perhaps I could have
loved him years ago if I had chosen. Perhaps I have only to use my will
to be happy with him. I have never controlled my impulses. That has been
my curse and the cause of all my miseries."

At that moment she entirely forgot the ten years of self-control which
were behind her. The sudden return to her former self had apparently
blotted them out from her memory.

After telephoning to Seymour Portman she wrote a little note to Craven
and sent it round to the Foreign Office. In the note she explained
briefly that she was not able to see him that afternoon as had been
arranged between them. The wording of the note was cold. She could not
help that. She wrote it under the influence of what she thought of just
then as a decision. If she did what she believed she intended to do that
afternoon she would have to be cold to Craven in the future. With her
temperament it would be impossible to continue her friendship with
Craven if she were going to marry Sir Seymour. She knew that. But she
did not know how frigid, how almost brusque, her note to Craven was.

When he read it he felt as if he had received a cold douche. It startled
him and hurt him, hurt his youthful sensitiveness and pride. And he
wondered very much why Lady Sellingworth had written it, and what had
happened to make her write to him like that. She did not even ask him
to call on her at some other time on some other day. And it had been she
who had suggested a cosy talk that afternoon. She had been going to
show him a book of poems by a young American poet in whose work she was
interested. And they would have talked over the little events of the
preceding evening, have discussed Moscovitch, the play, the persistence
of love, youth, age, everything under the sun.

Craven was severely disappointed. He even felt rather angry and hurt.
Something in him was up in arms, but something else was distressed and
anxious. It was extraordinary how already he had come to depend upon
Lady Sellingworth. His mother was dead. He certainly did not think of
Lady Sellingworth as what is sometimes called "a second mother." There
was nothing maternal about her, and he was fully