d
scents and colours, from music and art, from dancing, flowers, and all
that made life beautiful? The secret forces of fastidiousness, an inborn
dread of the fanatical, and all her real ignorance of what such a life
was like, rose in Cecilia with a force which made her feel quite sick.
Better that she herself should do this thing than that her own child
should be deprived of air and light and all the just environment of
her youth and beauty. 'She must come back--she must listen to me!' she
thought. 'We will begin together; we will start a nice little creche of
our own, or--perhaps Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace could find us some regular
work on one of her committees.'

Then suddenly she conceived a thought which made her blood run
positively cold. What if it were a matter of heredity? What if Thyme had
inherited her grandfather's single-mindedness? Martin was giving proof
of it. Things, she knew, often skipped a generation and then set in
again. Surely, surely, it could not have done that! With longing, yet
with dread, she waited for the sound of Stephen's latchkey. It came at
its appointed time.

Even in her agitation Cecilia did not forget to spare him, all she
could. She began by giving him a kiss, and then said casually: "Thyme
has got a whim into her head."

"What whim?"

"It's rather what you might expect," faltered Cecilia, "from her going
about so much with Martin."

Stephen's face assumed at once an air of dry derision; there was no love
lost between him and his young nephew-in-law.

"The Sanitist?" he said; "ah! Well?"

"She has gone off to do work-some place in the Euston Road. I've had a
telegram. Oh, and I found this, Stephen."

She held out to him half-heartedly the two bits of paper, one
pinkish-brown, the other blue. Stephen saw that she was trembling. He
took them from her, read them, and looked at her again. He had a real
affection for his wife, and the tradition of consideration for other
people's feelings was bred in him, so that at this moment, so vitally
disturbing, the first thing he did was to put his hand on her shoulder
and give it a reassuring squeeze. But there was also in Stephen a
certain primitive virility, pickled, it is true, at Cambridge, and in
the Law Courts dried, but still preserving something of its possessive
and assertive quality, and the second thing he did was to say, "No, I'm
damned!"

In that little sentence lay the whole psychology of his attitude
towards this situa