“Then let’s go for a walk.”  She shot a furtive, comprehending look at the girl.  “This really isn’t such a bad place,” she told her wistfully.

They separated to dress, smiling at each other kindly and uneasily.  Ellen went into her room, and stood about, thinking how romantic it all was, but wondering what was the termination of a romance where curtains do not fall at the act’s end, until her eyes fell upon her reflection in the mirror.  She was standing with her head bowed and her cheek resting on her clasped hands, and she wished somebody would snapshot her like that, for though of course it would be affected to take such a pose in front of a camera, she would like Richard to have a photograph of her looking like that.  Suddenly she remembered how Richard delighted in her, and what pretty things he found to say about her without putting himself out, and how he was always sorry to leave her and sometimes came back for another kiss, and she felt enormously proud of being the dispenser of such satisfactions, and began to put on her hat and coat with peacocking gestures and recklessly light-minded glances in the mirror.  The reflection of a crumpled face-towel thrown into a wisp over the rail of the washstand reminded her in some way of the white-faced wee thing Mr. Philip had been during the last few days when she had gone back to the office, and this added to her exhilaration, though she did not see why.  She was suddenly relieved from her fear of being dispossessed of her own life.

CHAPTER III

They went out of the house by the French window of the dining-room, and crossed a garden whose swept lawns and grass walks and flower-beds, in which the golden aconite, January’s sole floral dividend, was laid out to the thriftiest advantage.  It showed, Ellen thought, the same wild orderliness as the house.  Through a wicket-gate they passed into an orchard, and followed a downward path among the whitened trunks.  “This is all the land I’ve kept of the old farm,” said Marion.  “The rest is let.  I let it years ago.  Richard never wanted to be a farmer.  It was always science he was keen on, from the time he was a boy of ten.”

“Then why did he go to sea?” asked Ellen.  The path they were following was so narrow that they had to walk singly, so when Marion did not answer Ellen’s question she thought it must be because she had not spoken loudly enough.  She repeated it.  “Why did he go to sea, if he was so keen on science?”

But Marion still took some seconds to reply, and then her words were patently edited by reserve.  “Oh, he was sixteen ... boys need adventure....”