“Oh, it’s only what’s the matter with every one!” she exclaimed.  “No one feels—­no one does anything but hurt.  I tell you, Helen, the world’s bad.  It’s an agony, living, wanting—­”

Here she tore a handful of leaves from a bush and crushed them to control herself.

“The lives of these people,” she tried to explain, the aimlessness, the way they live.  “One goes from one to another, and it’s all the same.  One never gets what one wants out of any of them.”

Her emotional state and her confusion would have made her an easy prey if Helen had wished to argue or had wished to draw confidences.  But instead of talking she fell into a profound silence as they walked on.  Aimless, trivial, meaningless, oh no—­what she had seen at tea made it impossible for her to believe that.  The little jokes, the chatter, the inanities of the afternoon had shrivelled up before her eyes.  Underneath the likings and spites, the comings together and partings, great things were happening—­terrible things, because they were so great.  Her sense of safety was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead leaves she had seen the movement of a snake.  It seemed to her that a moment’s respite was allowed, a moment’s make-believe, and then again the profound and reasonless law asserted itself, moulding them all to its liking, making and destroying.

She looked at Rachel walking beside her, still crushing the leaves in her fingers and absorbed in her own thoughts.  She was in love, and she pitied her profoundly.  But she roused herself from these thoughts and apologised.  “I’m very sorry,” she said, “but if I’m dull, it’s my nature, and it can’t be helped.”  If it was a natural defect, however, she found an easy remedy, for she went on to say that she thought Mr. Flushing’s scheme a very good one, only needing a little consideration, which it appeared she had given it by the time they reached home.  By that time they had settled that if anything more was said, they would accept the invitation.

Chapter XX

When considered in detail by Mr. Flushing and Mrs. Ambrose the expedition proved neither dangerous nor difficult.  They found also that it was not even unusual.  Every year at this season English people made parties which steamed a short way up the river, landed, and looked at the native village, bought a certain number of things from the natives, and returned again without damage done to mind or body.  When it was discovered that six people really wished the same thing the arrangements were soon carried out.