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yourself for not going? Didn’t you feel it was to use her cruelly?’

Ingpen stopped in his walk and looked over at her. ‘I wanted to stay near you,’ he said.

Monica pondered, not lifting her eyes from the fire. ‘Near her too, don’t you think, perhaps?’

‘No. I still wear her ring. I always shall. Because of something she meant to me that no one else will ever mean: something of youth and faith. But I was horribly sorry to find her here. All I wanted of her was to ask if we couldn’t be friends; if she couldn’t accept my going on among you all. Judged by her old standards she would have felt it absurd that I should have to clear out now just because she and I had once been lovers; absurd, antiquated, irrational. And you know, in a way, I feel it that myself.—No: I am going: I see I must go. I see you all push me out. But the odd thing is that you—the older generation—could bear it, could live over it and keep me here.—Isn’t it so?’—He confronted her and then went on, not waiting for an answer, his voice recovering its heavy calm; ‘But when I saw her yesterday I saw how she had changed. You have changed her; he has changed her. She has grown into all the standards she once rejected so fiercely.