yself to Jesus," he said with that whistling note, "I'll be
able to see her every day."

"She won't turn you away."

There was folly, there was innocence in Roger's failure to notice that
Richard was speaking not in reassurance but in grimness, as one might
speak who sees a doom, fire or flood travelling down on to the place
where he stood. "You ought to know, old chap," he murmured hopefully.
"She's always shown her heart to you, like she never has to me.... I
don't know.... Oh, I've prayed...."

"Well, you'll know for yourself in a minute," said Richard. "I heard the
front door open and close a second ago."

Ellen felt a thrill of pride because he had such keen senses, for the
sound had been so soft that she had not heard it, and yet it had reached
him in the depth of his horrified absorption of his brother's being. She
longed to smile at him and tell him how she loved him for this and all
the other things, but again he wouldn't pay attention to her. Indeed, he
could not, for, as she saw from his white mask, he was wholly given up
to pain and apprehension. Her heart was wrung for him, for she saw the
case against Roger. He was sickening like something that has been fried
in insufficient fat; and that his loathsomeness proceeded from no moral
flaw made it all the more sinister. If there was not vileness in his
will to account for the impression he made, then it must be kneaded
into his general substance, and meanness be the meaning of his pallor,
and treachery the secret of the darkness of his hair. She looked at him
accusingly as he stood beside the buxom, sullen woman, who in a slum
version of the emotion of embarrassment was sucking and gnawing one of
her fingers, and she found shining in his face the light of love; true
love that keeps faith and does service even when it is used
despitefully. Perplexed, she doubted all judgment.

The doorhandle turned, and Richard stepped in front of Roger. But when
Marion slowly came into the room she did not see him or anyone else,
because she was looking down on a piece of broken china which she held
in her hand.

There was stillness till Richard whispered: "Mother."

She lifted her dark eyes and said, with inordinate melancholy, "Oh,
Richard, someone has broken the Lowestoft jug I used for flowers in the
parlour."

He answered softly: "No one broke it. The wind blew it down when I
opened the door to Roger."

Her eyes did not move from his. Her mouth was a round hole.