Roger seemed a little annoyed when Richard and Ellen found the cap for him among the cushions.  Having to thank them spoiled, it could be seen, some valedictory effect which he had planned.  He stood by while they shook hands with Poppy, who turned her head away as if to hide some scar, and when she had gone across to Marion tried to get in his designed tremendousness.  By the working of his face, which made even his ears move a little, they knew they must endure something very characteristic of him.  But into his weak eyes there bubbled a spring of joyful tenderness so bright, so clear, so intense that, though it would have seemed more fitting on the face of a child than of a man, it yet was dignified.

“You make a handsome couple, you two!” he said.

“Richard, you’re a whole lot taller than me.  When I’m away from you I forget what a difference there is between us.  And the young lady, she’s fine, too.”

“Come on!  Come on!” said Poppy from the door.

He drew wistfully away from them.  “I do hope you both come to Jesus,” he murmured, and smiled sweetly over his shoulder.  “Yes, Poppy, I’m quite ready.  Why, you aren’t cross with me over anything, are you, dear?  Well, good-bye, mother.”

“Good-bye, Roger.  And we’ll come to the meeting.  I’ll let you out myself, my dears.”

Very pleased that she and Richard were at last alone together, Ellen sat down on one of the armchairs at the hearth and smiled up at him.  But he would not come to her.  He smiled back through the closed visor of an overmastering preoccupation, and moved past her to the fireplace and stood with his elbow on one end of the mantelpiece, listening to the sounds that came in from the parlour through the half-open door:  Marion’s urbane voice, thin and smooth like a stretched membrane, the click of the front-door handle, the last mounting squeal from Roger, which was cut short by a gruff whine from Poppy, and, loudest of all, the silence that fell after the banging of the door.  They heard the turn of the electric switch.  Marion must be standing out there in the dark.  But Ellen doubted that even if he had been with her in soul as in body, and had spoken to her the words she wished, she could have answered him as she ought, for a part of her soul too was standing out there in the dark with Marion.  They were both of them tainted with disloyalty to their own lives.

When Marion came in she halted at the door and turned out all the lamps save the candlesticks on the table.  She passed through the amber, fire-shot twilight and sat down in the other armchair, and began to polish her nails on the palm of her hands.  They were all of them lapped in dusk, veiled with it, featureless because of it.  Behind them the candlesticks cast a brilliant light on the disordered table, on the four chairs where Richard and Marion, Roger and Poppy had sat.  Ellen’s chair had been pushed back against the wall when she rose; one would not have known that Ellen had been sitting there too.