Always love.

Scrap got up, and winding herself very tightly in her wrap moved away to her day corner, and sat down there alone on the wall and looked out across the other sea, the sea where the sun had gone down, the sea with the far-away dim shadow stretching into it which was France.

Yes, love worked wonders, and Mr. Arundel—­she couldn’t at once get used to his other name—­was to Rose Love itself; but it also worked inverted wonders, it didn’t invariably, as she well knew, transfigure people into saints and angels.  Grievously indeed did it sometimes do the opposite.  She had had it in her life applied to her to excess.  If it had let her alone, if it had at least been moderate and infrequent, she might, she thought, have turned out a quite decent, generous-minded, kindly, human being.  And what was she, thanks to this love Lotty talked so much about?  Scrap searched for a just description.  She was a spoilt, a sour, a suspicious, and a selfish spinster.

The glass doors of the dining-room opened, and the three men came out into the garden, Mr. Wilkins’s voice flowing along in front of them.  He appeared to be doing all the talking; the other two were saying nothing.

Perhaps she had better go back to Lotty and Rose; it would be tiresome to be discovered and hemmed into the cul-de-sac by Mr. Briggs.

She got up reluctantly, for she considered it unpardonable of Mr. Briggs to force her to move about like this, to force her out of any place she wished to sit in; and she emerged from the daphne bushes feeling like some gaunt, stern figure of just resentment and wishing that she looked as gaunt and stern as she felt; so would she have struck repugnance into the soul of Mr. Briggs, and been free of him.  But she knew she didn’t look like that, however hard she might try.  At dinner his hand shook when he drank, and he couldn’t speak to her without flushing scarlet and then going pale, and Mrs. Fisher’s eyes had sought hers with the entreaty of one who asks that her only son may not be hurt.

How could a human being, thought Scrap, frowning as she issued forth from her corner, how could a man made in God’s image behave so; and be fitted for better things she was sure, with his youth, his attractiveness, and his brains.  He had brains.  She had examined him cautiously whenever at dinner Mrs. Fisher forced him to turn away to answer her, and she was sure he had brains.  Also he had character; there was something noble about his head, about the shape of his forehead—­noble and kind.  All the more deplorable that he should allow himself to be infatuated by a mere outside, and waste any of his strength, any of his peace of mind, hanging round just a woman-thing.  If only he could see right through her, see through all her skin and stuff, he would be cured, and she might go on sitting undisturbed on this wonderful night by herself.

Just beyond the daphne bushes she met Fredrick, hurrying.