of something far worse than
Lawrence Stephen before Frances would have cast her off. Frances felt
that it was not for her to sit in judgment under the shelter of her tree
of Heaven. Supposing she could only have had Anthony as Vera had had
Ferdie, could she have lived without him? For Frances nothing in the
world had any use or interest or significance but her husband and her
children; her children first, and Anthony after them. For Vera nothing
in the world counted but her lover.

"If only I were as sure of Lawrence as you are of Anthony!" she would
say.

Yet she lived the more intensely, if the more dangerously, through the
very risks of her exposed and forbidden love.

Vera was without fidelity to the unreturning dead; but she made up for
it by an incorruptible adoration of the living. And she had been made
notorious chiefly through Stephen's celebrity, which was, you might say,
a pure accident.

Thus Frances made shelter for her friend. Only Vera must be made to
understand that, though _she_ was accepted Lawrence Stephen was not. He
was the point at which toleration ceased.

And Vera did understand. She understood that Frances and Anthony
disapproved of her last adventure considerably more on Ferdie's and
Veronica's account than on Bartie's. Even family loyalty could not
espouse Bartie's cause with any zest. For Bartie showed himself
implacable. Over and over again she had implored him to divorce her so
that Lawrence might marry her, and over and over again he had refused.
His idea was to assert himself by refusals. In that way he could still
feel that he had power over her and a sort of possession. It was he who
was scandalous. Even now neither Frances nor Anthony had a word to
say for him.

So Vera consented to be received surreptitiously, by herself, and
without receiving Frances and Anthony in her turn. It had hurt her; but
Stephen's celebrity was a dressing to her wound. He was so distinguished
that it was unlikely that Frances, or Anthony either, would ever have
been received by him without Vera. She came, looking half cynical, half
pathetic, her beauty a little blurred, a little beaten after seventeen
years of passion and danger, saying that she wasn't going to force Larry
down their throats if they didn't like him; and she went away sustained
by her sense of his distinction and _his_ repudiations.

And she found further support in her knowledge that, if Frances and
Anthony could resist Lawrence, the