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sit upright on the chair and she certainly could not go and rest while he waited. Clive leaned back against the window-frame, his arms folded. ‘It’s this,” he said. ‘You are cruelly unfair to Hester; and you always have been.’

‘Yes; I see. Yes;—I thought that was what you were going to say,’ said Monica. ‘Won't you sit down, Clive? You look tired.’

‘No; I'd rather stand.—You do own it, then. You do see it. From the very beginning it has been,’ said Clive. ‘And from the very beginning it has spoiled everything.’

‘Not everything, Clive? You have had your happiness. She didn’t see.’

‘No; that’s true. Hester didn’t see. She’s simpler than you and I are and she didn’t expect to be cared for; didn’t ask it, or didn’t think it made any difference. That was a little stupid of Hester,’ said Clive, and across the room the white sincerity of his face flashed at her like a sword. ‘She had never met a relation like ours. Her own family life had been wretched. She didn’t in a way take parents seriously; just as a girl of her type doesn’t take the past seriously; doesn’t know that it counts, counts horribly, in the present. They are stupid in that