Page:Dark Hester.djvu/200

walked in the opposite direction. She felt struck, stunned, rather than enraged; and after she had walked for a little while it came over her that a sick admiration for Hester coloured her detestation. Yes, Hester undoubtedly was guilty, and had been her victim, or, rather, her trapped quarry; yet, without insolence, without retort, could any creature have contrived more indubitably to preserve dignity in overthrow? She had avowed nothing; she had denied nothing. ‘She hasn’t a fibre of weakness in her; or of meanness,’ Monica thought, hardly aware of the strangeness of such a tribute at such a moment. ‘I almost understand why they both fell in love with her.’ Something inviolate, unconquerable in herself recognized and did homage to the strength of her mortal enemy.

It was already half-past four when she reached Norah’s, and she saw Celia in the garden, bare-headed, in a very lovely little grey dress. Here was Celia and Hester was walking away to the station. It almost seemed to Monica, as she opened the gate and went in, that Hester was walking out of their lives. After her anguish, her lassitude, her stupefaction, it was now an oblivious blitheness that overtook her; the reckless mood of a fairy-tale make-believe. Here was Celia; Clive would soon be here