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he said, and he turned to the window and looked out as he spoke. ‘I see now why you came down here; to get away from her. I see why you couldn’t pretend to be glad when we came. We can’t help hating, I suppose; but it does seem to me, Mother, that we can help being unjust. It does seem to me that you might have put out your hand to her, and all that she was trying to do for us both — when once she had realized that I was suffering.’

She glanced up at him. ‘It seems to me, Clive,’ she said, her lips moved faintly and the words just issued; ‘ that it was always I who held out my hand and Hester who did not even see it and walked past it. It seems to me that it is you who are cruelly unjust. What you said a moment ago is the truth. Hester never thought about me at all. She didn’t care a jot whether I cared for her or not. All that she cared for was to have you, and to keep you; and while she cared to keep you, I did not exist.’

‘It’s not true! It’s not true!’ Clive cried, and he turned to her again and eyed her, fiercely, yet supplicatingly. ‘You don’t understand a girl of Hester’s type. She hasn’t your codes and symbols; she doesn’t feel or express things as you and I do. You don’t dream how shy and sensitive and apprehensive she is, under that firm surface.—She’s had