Surely, after having been able to keep the secret of what she felt for him through that torturing moment when she found Richard’s displeasure, she had the right to expect that all would go well.  It was loathsome having him in the house, and she and Richard were hardly ever alone.  But her bad dreams left her.  This was life simple as the Christians said it was, in which one might hug serenity by the conscientious performance of a disagreeable duty.  Yet there came a day, about three weeks after his coming, when Roger sat glumly at the midday meal and did not talk, as he had ordinarily done, about the chaps at Exeter, and how there was one chap who could imitate birds’ calls so that you couldn’t hardly tell the difference, and how another chap had an uncle who was a big grocer and used to send him a box of crystallised fruit at Christmas; and immediately the meal was finished he rose and left the room, instead of waiting about and saying, “I s’pose you aren’t going for a walk, are you, mummie?” Relieved by his departure, she had leaned back in her chair and smiled up at Richard, saying, “How brown you are still!” when suddenly there had flashed across her a recollection of how Roger’s shoulders had looked as he went out of the room, and she started up to run out and find him.  He was in one of the outhouses, clumsily trying to carpenter something that was to be a surprise to somebody.  He did not look up when she came in, though he said with a funny lift in his voice, “Hello, mummy!” She stood over him, watching his work till she could not bear to look at his warty hands any longer, and then asked:  “Roger, dear, is there anything the matter?” She spoke to him always without any character in her phrases, like a mother in books.  He mumbled, “Nothing, mummie,” but would not lift his head; and after a gulping minute whimpered:  “I want to go back to the shop.”  “Back to the shop, dear?  But I thought you hated it.  Darling, what is the matter?” He remained silent, so she took his face between her hands and looked into his eyes.  Perhaps that had not been a very wise thing to do.

Marion had dropped her hands and gone back to Richard, and said with simulated fierceness:  “You haven’t done anything to Roger that would make him think that we don’t like having him here?” He glanced sharply at her and recognised that their destiny was turning ugly in their hands, and he answered:  “Of course not.  I wouldn’t do anything to a chap who’s been through such a rotten time.”  She thought, with shame, that if his face had become cruel at her question, and he had answered that he thought it was time the other went, she would have bowed to his decision, because he was her king, and she realised that it was no wonder that Roger had found out.  That moment of which she was so proud because she had said heartily, “Richard, don’t you see it’s Roger?” without showing by any wild yearning of the eye that she would have given anything to be alone with him, had been instantly followed