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about me, really, do you? and when you found out that Godfrey and I had been lovers, all the rest must have seemed inevitable. I understood, even last night, when Clive came back, what had happened.—All the same, I do rather wonder at you;—not so much because of me and Godfrey—whom you don’t know;—but because of Clive.—How you could think, I mean, that Clive’s wife would deceive him. But then you have never understood what I feel about Clive; how I care for him, I mean.’

‘Do you mind telling me?—What you feel about him? I always knew you loved him,’ said Monica, after the long pause that followed Hester’s words; ‘but even loving wives do sometimes deceive their husbands.’

Hester knocked off the end of her cigarette and held it away and looked at it, frowning. ‘I’d like to try,’ she said. ‘I’d like to try to explain. It would be a pity not to get it clear, wouldn’t it, while we are like this.—What I mean is that I feel you would understand anything I told you.’

‘I am sure I should, Hester. Anything you told me.’

‘About Clive, then. He was so different from all the men I’d known. He made the rest of them seem