LONE TRAILS

So much of mental passion could be lived through upon one side of a wall
and on the other Georgie wake fresh and unknowing of it all, stretch a
moment, wonder as to what time Judy had come in, tip-toe to her room and
peep, to see a sleeping face so pale and haggard that she withdrew,
suddenly sorry, she did not quite know why. Judy could look old ... she
reflected. Georgie herself felt a lilting sense of interest in this day
which she had not hitherto during her stay at Paradise Cottage. Nothing
had happened, and yet somehow she felt different. It was not even that
she had had a letter from Val, for he had written two days ago, and so
she would not hear again for several days, a ready pen not being his.
And she was beginning to be guiltily conscious that she did not enjoy
getting his letters; they seemed somehow to disrupt atmosphere instead
of creating it. Everything was different from that day on the river when
Val had told her he loved her and it had all seemed so simple. She had
accepted him then because she was so fond of him, and she knew everyone
would be pleased, and also she was pleased herself. He was so young and
jolly, and they had always fitted so well, though in his music--he was
by way of being a young composer--he was out of her depth.

They fitted too well; since their engagement Georgie, feeling it lacked
excitement and being both very young and a woman, and therefore an
experimentalist, had tried to get up little scenes so as to have
quarrels and reconciliations. She would do things which she had first
got him to say he did not like; then she defied him, only to meet with
an ineffectual annoyance on his part. When after each scene she gave
way, as she had meant to do all along, she knew in her heart that it was
because she chose to submit, not because he had the strength to compel
her. He was too young and inexperienced to see that she was young enough
to be craving for a master, while at the same time he was old enough to
want peace and mutual consideration. He would have been shocked at the
idea of using brutality to her, and brutality was what Georgie, without
recognising it, wanted.

She shook herself impatiently now as the thought of Val came to her
when, turning over her handkerchiefs to choose a clean one, she came
upon his last letter. Dear old Val! ... but he had no part in this
clear, pale spring day and all it was going to hold.

She checked herself as she was bursting