n the
platform. I must see her through."

From the dark fey shape he made against the firelight she knew that he
was not thinking of her, that the life she had given him by her love no
longer ran in his veins. She scratched one of her wrists. If she could
have let the life he had given flow out of her veins she would have done
it. "Ay, do," she said. "I like you to be good to your mother. You never
know how long you may have her with you," she added piously and not
without cheerfulness.

He left her with a kiss that was dry and spurious like a paper flower.
She sank back into the chair and closed her eyes again, and listened for
the closing of the front door which would leave her free to weep or rage
or dance or do whatever would relieve the pressure of the moment on her
brain. She filled in the throbbing tune by thinking of the visitors. It
gave her a curious thrill, such as she might have felt if she had
gratified her ambition to carry a heavy-plumed fan like Sarah
Bernhardt's, to reflect that she had sat in the same room with a bad
woman. A desire for unspecified adult things ran through her veins, as
if she had just heard the strong initial blare of a band. Then she
checked all thoughts, for from the hall she heard the sound of argument.

The door was flung open by Marion. She moved towards the hearth with a
burly speed which marked this moment a crisis in the house of languid,
inhibited movements, and cast herself down on a low stool by the fender.
Richard followed and stood over her, the firelight driving over his face
like the glow of excited blood, the shadows lying in his eye-sockets
like blindness. She cried up at him: "No, I will not go if you come too.
How can I go and sit listening to him, with you beside me hating him!"
He swayed slowly, but did not answer. She stripped herself of coat and
furs and thrust them on him. "There. Take them up to my room. I'm not
going. I'll tell some lie. Better than you hating him like this. And
while you're up you'll find some papers on my desk about the mortgage on
Whitewebbs. Attend to these. And don't come back just now. You drive me
mad when you hate Roger so."

When he had softly shut the door she put her hand to her head and said:
"Oh, Ellen, what has happened to me? I have lost all my strength."

But her voice was still level, and she was but a squat, crouching mass
against the firelight. Ellen did not know whether she was really moved,
nor, if she were, whether