that, like two children who kiss first, and then make
acquaintance, they stood apart, silent, faintly smiling. It had been
given and returned in real sweetness and comradeship, that kiss, for
a sign of womanhood making face against the world; but now that it was
over, both felt a little awkward. Would that kiss have been given if
Fate had been auspicious? Was it not proof of misery? So Mrs. Noel's
smile seemed saying, and Barbara's smile unwillingly admitted.
Perceiving that if they talked it could only be about the most ordinary
things, they began speaking of music, flowers, and the queerness of
bees' legs. But all the time, Barbara, though seemingly unconscious, was
noting with her smiling eyes, the tiny movement's, by which one woman
can tell what is passing in another. She saw a little quiver tighten
the corner of the lips, the eyes suddenly grow large and dark, the
thin blouse desperately rise and fall. And her fancy, quickened by last
night's memory, saw this woman giving herself up to the memory of love
in her thoughts. At this sight she felt a little of that impatience
which the conquering feel for the passive, and perhaps just a touch of
jealousy.

Whatever Miltoun decided, that would this woman accept! Such
resignation, while it simplified things, offended the part of Barbara
which rebelled against all inaction, all dictation, even from her
favourite brother. She said suddenly:

"Are you going to do nothing? Aren't you going to try and free yourself?
If I were in your position, I would never rest till I'd made them free
me."

But Mrs. Noel did not answer; and sweeping her glance from that crown
of soft dark hair, down the soft white figure, to the very feet, Barbara
cried:

"I believe you are a fatalist."

Soon after that, not knowing what more to say, she went away. But
walking home across the fields, where full summer was swinging on the
delicious air and there was now no bull but only red cows to crop
short the 'milk-maids' and buttercups, she suffered from this strange
revelation of the strength of softness and passivity--as though she had
seen in the white figure of 'Anonyma,' and heard in her voice something
from beyond, symbolic, inconceivable, yet real.

CHAPTER XVIII

Lord Valleys, relieved from official pressure by subsidence of the
war scare, had returned for a long week-end. To say that he had been
intensely relieved by the news that Mrs. Noel was not free, would be
to put it mildly