the alabaster vases on the mantelpiece, they disclosed those hands as
long and yellowish and covered with warts. The parlourmaid came in and,
over her shoulder, Marion said easily: "Tea now, Mabel. There're five of
us. And we'll have it down here at the table."

She waved her visitors towards chairs and herself moved over to an
armchair at the hearth. All her movements were easy and her face wore a
look of blandness as she settled back among the cushions, until it
became evident that she was to be disappointed in her natural hope that
Roger would see the necessity of stopping his babble while the servant
was going in and out of the room. It was true that he did not speak when
she was actually present, but he began again on his whistling intimacies
the minute she closed the door, and when she returned cut himself short
and relapsed into a breathy silence that made it seem as if he had been
talking of something to the discredit of them all. Ellen felt disgust in
watching him, and more of this perverse pleasure in this situation,
which she ought to have whole-heartedly abhorred, when she watched
Marion. She was one of those women who wear distress like a rose in
their hair. Her eyes, which wandered between the two undesired visitors,
were star-bright and aerial-soft; under her golden, age-dusked pallor
her blood rose crimson with surprise; her face was abandoned so amazedly
to her peril that it lost all its burden of reserve, and was upturned
and candid as if she were a girl receiving her first kiss; her body,
taut in case she had to keep up and restrain Roger from some folly of
attitude or blubbering flight, recovered the animation of youth. It was
no wonder that Richard did not look at anybody but his mother.

"You see, mother, it was Poppy who brought me to Jesus," Roger said, a
second before the door closed. "I ... I'd had a bit of trouble. I'd been
very foolish.... I'll tell you about that later. It isn't because I'm
cowardly and unrepentant that I won't tell it now. I've told it once on
the Confession Bench in front of lots of people, so I'm not a coward.
And I don't believe," he declared, casting a look of dislike at Richard
and Ellen, "that the Lord would want me to tell anybody but you about
it." The servant returned, and he fell silent; with such an effect that
she looked contemptuously at her mistress as she might have if bailiffs
had been put into the house. When she had gone he began again: "It was
this way