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To see Celia standing there under Clive’s hand gave her a cutting comfort. It put her out, but it kept them, and the future, together. It was well, even if it put her out, that he had Celia to turn to.

‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered.

‘It’s bad of Hester,’ Celia tried to help them both as best she could, ‘because the tea-party is really given for her; but we know what a busy person she is. Probably it was a message. Mrs. Travers may have sent for her, Clive. You know she said on Saturday that Mrs. Travers was in some difficulty.’

‘Yes. Perhaps it is Mrs. Travers.’ Clive looked at her unseeingly. ‘But I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll dine, Mother’ (he called her ‘Mother’)—‘I think I’d rather wait for Hester at home. Shall we have a little turn in the garden, Celia? Isn’t it rather hot in here?’

‘May I come—alone?’ Celia stooped to her to ask it. But it was less to ask than to look her tenderness, to implore her to take heart.

‘The truth is that my heart is broken, Celia’—that was what Monica felt she would have liked to reply. Even if Clive were to understand all and to forgive all, how was she to forget that he could look at her like that, with that pallid alienation? He saw her as cruel; he believed her vindictive. She had