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way,’ Clive repeated, staring down for a moment at the floor.

‘Then, since she was too stupid to see, what do you blame me for?’ asked Monica. This was all irrelevant; this was all enmeshing; but she must let Clive speak. She could not strike him down among these thickets of misunderstanding. But the briars sprang up with every word she uttered and Clive was eyeing her with a look of scorn as he answered: ‘She did see. She began to feel I was unhappy. She was not too stupid to feel that, though I tried to hide it from her. I tried to hide from you both, to pretend to you both that you got on and that I was contented with your relation. I thought that if I went on pretending long enough it might grow; you might begin to see her a little more truly, and do her some degree of justice. But Hester saw what you failed to see; that I was wretched. And how are we to go on now, when you show her as well as me that you hate her?’

Monica sat silent, her eyes on the floor. It was true that she hated Hester now; it was perhaps true that she had hated her from the beginning; and with reason. Clive was looking at her but she could not look at him, and if he had had a lingering hope it died then, for she denied nothing. ‘I see it all now,’