oger sat glumly at the midday meal and did not talk, as he
had ordinarily done, about the chaps at Exeter, and how there was one
chap who could imitate birds' calls so that you couldn't hardly tell
the difference, and how another chap had an uncle who was a big grocer
and used to send him a box of crystallised fruit at Christmas; and
immediately the meal was finished he rose and left the room, instead of
waiting about and saying, "I s'pose you aren't going for a walk, are
you, mummie?" Relieved by his departure, she had leaned back in her
chair and smiled up at Richard, saying, "How brown you are still!" when
suddenly there had flashed across her a recollection of how Roger's
shoulders had looked as he went out of the room, and she started up to
run out and find him. He was in one of the outhouses, clumsily trying to
carpenter something that was to be a surprise to somebody. He did not
look up when she came in, though he said with a funny lift in his voice,
"Hello, mummy!" She stood over him, watching his work till she could not
bear to look at his warty hands any longer, and then asked: "Roger,
dear, is there anything the matter?" She spoke to him always without any
character in her phrases, like a mother in books. He mumbled, "Nothing,
mummie," but would not lift his head; and after a gulping minute
whimpered: "I want to go back to the shop." "Back to the shop, dear? But
I thought you hated it. Darling, what is the matter?" He remained
silent, so she took his face between her hands and looked into his eyes.
Perhaps that had not been a very wise thing to do.

Marion had dropped her hands and gone back to Richard, and said with
simulated fierceness: "You haven't done anything to Roger that would
make him think that we don't like having him here?" He glanced sharply
at her and recognised that their destiny was turning ugly in their
hands, and he answered: "Of course not. I wouldn't do anything to a chap
who's been through such a rotten time." She thought, with shame, that if
his face had become cruel at her question, and he had answered that he
thought it was time the other went, she would have bowed to his
decision, because he was her king, and she realised that it was no
wonder that Roger had found out. That moment of which she was so proud
because she had said heartily, "Richard, don't you see it's Roger?"
without showing by any wild yearning of the eye that she would have
given anything to be alone with him, had been