of Richard and herself be the perfect crystal sphere that it had been before they came here, but must always, till they died, be flawed with insincerity.  She would never dare tell him how, thought over, those trivial plans for the next day’s pleasuring were revealed, themselves, as devices of a tremendous hammering nobility; how, seen with the intelligence of memory, the face at the window had been the greasy mask of a swimmer in the icy waters of the ultimate fear; how there had stood on the lawn for a long time what had seemed a loiterer, but was in truth a pillar of love.  If she let his inherited excessiveness learn this he would go mad; and he would hate her for not reading these signs when they had been given her.  All her life she would have to keep silence concerning something of which he would speak repeatedly.  She would become queer and jerky with strained inhibitions ... charmless....  Perhaps he would go from her to unburdened women....

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said wearily when she had finished; “maybe it was an accident.”  He began to eat again, but soon pushed away his plate and stood up looking down on the hearth.  “Where did she sit?  Which chair?”

“Yon, at your hand.”

He drooped over it, caressing the velvet cover.  “Will I ever get him out of this house, where everything will always remind him of her?” she wondered savagely.  Really Marion was magnificent, but she was very upsetting.  She was like a cardinal in full robes falling downstairs.  And for what inadequate reason she had caused all this commotion!  Just because her two sons quarrelled!  She could have prevented that easily enough if she had brought them up properly and skelped them when they needed it.  Ellen curled her lip as she watched him stroking the soft velvet, laying his cheek against it.

“And the desk?  You say she sat there while she talked to cook?”

“Yes.”

She hated the way he sat down in front of it; in a heap, like a tired navvy.  By her death Marion deprived her of her beautiful lightfooted lover.  But she must wait.  He would come back.  She became aware that Roger was speaking to her.  It appeared that he had sobbed in his cup and had sent jets of tea flying over the tablecloth, and he was now apologising.

“Never heed,” she told him comfortingly; “we’ll have a clean one for lunch.”  “I didn’t mean to,” he quavered piteously, but she checked him.  Richard had turned over his shoulder a white face.

“She sat here?...”

“Yes.  While the cook stood talking to her, she sat there.”

“She ...  You didn’t notice ... when she was sitting there ... if she was scribbling on the blotter?”

“Yes, she did.  I noticed that.”

“Ah ... ah....”

* * * * *