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endure that another woman should make your son happy. Did it really come to that? Or had it been because of Celia that she had seen Hester from the first with hostile eyes?

‘How did it all begin?’ said Monica, watching the flames leap up.

‘Who is Clive’s new friend?’ Margaret Orde had asked. ‘The queer dark girl who dresses like a boy?’ It was so it had begun, the first hint brushing lightly yet sharply, like a branch of briar drawn across one’s face on a woodland ramble. Clive had seemed to share his life to every jot and tittle with her; and he had told her nothing of a new friend who was dark and queer. From the very first there had been a sharpness, a surmise.

‘Where did you see them? He has so many friends and all girls dress like boys nowadays,’ she had said.

Good old Margaret who lived out at Chiswick with her ancient father, loved these tea-table talks and to hear every detail of Monica and Clive’s London life. She insisted now, all interest and all innocence, on her topic.

‘Boys don’t curl their hair over their ears, or wear pink silk stockings, and neither did this girl. Her hair was brushed back and she wore what looked