Marion kept looking back at the illuminated table as if it were a symbol of the situation that made them sit in the twilight without words.  Suddenly she made a sound of distress.  “Oh dear!  Look at the cakes that have been left!  Ellen, you can’t have had anything to eat.”

“I’ve just had too good a tea,” said Ellen, using the classic Edinburgh formula.

“But you must have an eclair or a cream bun.  I got them for you.  I used to love them when I was your age.”  She rose and began to move round the table, bending over the cake-plates.  Ellen was reminded of the way that her own mother used to hover above the debris of the little tea-parties they sometimes gave in Hume Park Square, cheeping:  “I think they enjoyed their teas.  Do you not think so, Ellen?” and satisfying an appetite which she had been too solicitous and interested a hostess to more than whet in the presence of her friends.  That was how a mother ought to be, little, sweet, and moderate.

Marion brought her an eclair on a plate.  She took it and stood up, asking meekly:  “Shall I take it and eat it somewhere else?  You and Richard’ll be wanting to talk things over.”

“Ah, no!” Marion was startled; and Ellen, to her own distress, found herself exulting because this mature woman, who had dived so deeply into the tides of adult experience in which she herself had hardly been laved, was facing the situation so inadequately.  She scorned her for the stiffness of the conciliatory gesture she attempted, for the queer notes which her voice made when she tried to alter it from her customary tone of indifference in saying:  “But, Ellen dear, you’re one of us now.  We’ve no affairs that aren’t yours too.  We only wish they were a little gayer....”  She admired the facility of her own response for not more than a minute, for, giving her a kind, blindish smile, Marion walked draggingly across the hearthrug and took up her position at the disengaged side of the fireplace and rested her elbow on the mantelpiece, even as Richard was doing at its other end.  They stood side by side, without speaking, their firelit faces glowing darkly like rubies in shadow, their eyes set on the brilliantly lit tea-table and its four chairs.  They looked beautiful and unconquerable—­this tall man who could assail all things with his outstretched strength, this broad-bodied woman whom nothing could assail because of her crouching strength.

Marion stretched out her hand to the fire.  Her insanely polished nails glittered like jewels.

She said in that indifferent tone:  “Well, it wasn’t so bad.”

Some passion shook him.  “Mother!  Mother!  To think of him bringing that woman into this house—­to meet you and Ellen!”

“Hush, oh hush!  He does not know.”

“But, mother!  He ought to!  Anyone could see—­”

“What she was.  Yes, poor woman.  But remember I made a bad job of Roger.  I gave him no brains.”