o that she could get a servant easily and
be able to give her whole time to the children, had made her coldly sly
in her dealings with humanity. She liked Susan too much for that. Merely
she made no attempt to disguise her personality. After the children had
gone to bed she sat by the hearth and held her head high under the
other's ruminant stare, knowing that because of the times she had been
subject to love and to lust her beauty was lip-marked as a well-read
book is thumb-marked, and that that would seem a mark of abomination to
this woman in the salty climate of whose character passion could not
bloom. She knew, too, that to Susan, who every Sunday since her babyhood
had gone to church and prayed very hard, with her thick fair brows
brought close together, to be helped to be good, the pride of her
bearing would seem terribly wicked to a sinner who had broken one of the
Ten Commandments.

Marion kept down her eyes so that the other should not see that the
eyeballs were strained with agony, and should think that she was a loose
and conscienceless woman. She hated doing this. She liked Susan so much,
and she was terribly lonely. She would like to have thrown her arms
round Susan's neck and cried and cried, and told her how terribly
difficult she found life, and how she hated people being nasty to her,
and asked her if sometimes she did not long for a man to look after her.
But instead she sat there rigidly alienating her. For she had seen that
because Susan disliked her she was precipitating herself much more
impulsively than she would otherwise have done into affection for the
child whom she suspected was being maltreated by this queer woman in
this queer house. In any case she would have admitted Roger to her
heart, for it was plainly very empty since the loss of her son, whom she
had loved so dearly that she did not speak of him to Marion, but being
slow of movement she might have taken her time over it; and it was
necessary that these two should love each other at once. At any moment
Roger might understand his mummie hated him, and that would break his
poor little heart, which she knew was golden, unless he had some other
love to which to run. She was so glad when she found herself seeing them
off at Paddington, although it was a horrible scene. Susan had primly,
and with an air of refusing to participate in the spoils of vice,
declined to let Marion buy her a firstclass ticket, so the parting had
to take place in