Page:Dark Hester.djvu/293

happy as you are. You do know that it’s not from lack of love that she is leaving you.’

‘Mummy,’ Clive muttered, gazing at her and after a moment’s silence: ‘I don’t know where you stand; I don’t know what you’re trying to do for me;—but I do know that it’s no good.—She won’t stay. Not even if it were you as well as I who asked her to.’

‘Why not, Clive?’ She advanced and sat down on the chair at the foot of the bed and Clive’s eyes were sounding her. He did not know where she stood; but he must see that she was changed; he must see that it was no longer Hester’s enemy he confronted; and as he kept silence she said again: ‘Why not? I traduced Hester the other night, and you trusted her. You left me full of love and trust. You said that every drop of your blood was hers. What was it that happened when you got back to her? Why did she feel that she must leave you? Tell me, Clive? You must tell me. You must trust me.—You can trust me now,’ said Monica.

He turned away his face and shut his eyes and she saw that he was thinking hard. The thin, beautiful hand, the archangel hand, clenched itself again as he lay there thinking and when at last he spoke Clive was nearer than he had ever been, for