“I know well it doesn’t, but, remember, mother was old-fashioned Scotch, and she was most particular about having things just so.  Specially on melancholy occasions.  I remember she was most pernickety about her blacks after my father’s death.  And though she’s entered into eternal life, we’ve no guarantee that that makes a body sensible all at once.”  She saw on his face an expression which reminded her that he had been careful never to acquiesce when she spoke of the possibility of a future life, and she cried out:  “You needn’t look so clever.  I’m sure she’s going on somewhere, and why you should grudge it to the poor woman I don’t know.  And your mother thinks there’s something after death, too.  She told me this morning in the garden that she was quite certain of it when your father died.  She said that all the trees round the house seemed to know where he had gone.”

“Oh, she said that, did she?” His arms released her.  He stared into her face.  “She said that, did she?” he repeated in an absent, faintly malevolent murmur; and clasped her in his arms again and kissed her so cruelly that her lips began to bleed.

“Let me go, let me go!” she cried.  “You’re not loving me, you’re just taking exercise on me!”

He let her go, but not, she knew from the smile on his face, from any kindness, but rather that he might better observe her distress and gloat over it.  She moved away from the heat of the fire and from that other heat which had so strangely been engendered by these contacts which always before engendered light, and went to the window and laid her forehead against the cold glass.  The day had changed and lost its smile, for the sky was hidden by a dirty quilt of rain-charged clouds and the frost had seeped into the marshes and left them dark, acid winter green, yet she longed to walk out there in that unsunned and water-logged country, opening her coat to the cold wind brought by the grey, invading tides, making little cold pools where she dug her heels into the sodden ground, getting rid of her sense of inflammation, and being quite alone.  That she should want not to be with Richard, and that she should not be perfectly pleased with what pleased him, seemed to her monstrous disloyalty, and she turned and smiled at him.  But there was really something wrong with this room and this hour, for as she looked at him she felt frightened and ashamed, as if he were drunk, though she knew that he was sober; and indeed his face was flushed and his eyes wet and winking, as if smoke had blown in them.  For some reason that she could not understand he reminded her of Mr. Philip.

She cried out imploringly.  “Take me down to the marshes, Richard!”

He shook his head and laughed at some private joke.  She felt desolate, like a child at school whom other children shut out from their secrets, and drooped her head; and heard him say presently:  “We are going out this afternoon, but not on the marshes.”