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this, she wondered, as, looking into her son’s eyes, she saw his father struck down and remembered the slow brooks, the prowling figure and the fear in which the strange affinity had masked itself. But this was not disloyalty; not forgetfulness. All the loves, the lesser and the greater, the old and new, were there within her heart; swords crossing; notes clashing; though she saw, she heard, the attainable harmony. If she could stand firm and bear the pain, the harmony could be attained.

‘Does it make it more, or less endurable, Clive?’ she asked.

‘It puts me out,’ was what Clive said to her. He lay and looked at her.

‘No, darling. It only puts me out;—if you can’t forgive my loving him.’

‘It puts me out,’ Clive repeated, ‘with you both. I’m only second-best; with you both.—Somehow—that doesn’t seem enough to go on living for.’

She sat and thought.

‘It’s for your sake that we both put him out; because we love you most.’

‘You put him out because I’m your son; and Hester puts him out because I’m her husband. But you both love him best,’ said Clive, and he closed his eyes and turned his face away from her.