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have been an accident,’ was what she heard herself say.

‘Well, he would have known it couldn’t have been an accident, after your scene last night. It would have been the most awful kind of vengeance, really,’ said Hester. ‘But we won’t talk about it. Rest, and try not to think.’

But Monica muttered: ‘No; no;—I didn’t mean that. Try to believe that I didn’t mean that. It was only that when I saw he hated me I couldn’t go on.’

Hester was silent for a little while, and in the silence, over the whispering of the pine-trees, Monica heard, far away, the deep breaths of the engine as the 3.50 pulled out after its stop at Oddley Station.

‘You know, I think you are rather foolish,’ Hester then remarked, bitterly, but with a strange, impersonal bitterness. ‘You ought to know Clive better than that. People can say anything, when they’ve had a knock-down blow, can’t they? Clive had been knocked flat. You understand that, I’m sure. He doesn’t hate you. You couldn’t make him hate you—whatever you did. It’s much more me he’d be likely to hate.’

Monica put down her hands and raised her head