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only Clive’s subjection was made clear to her, but Hester’s still, impassive strength.

And then Celia. Celia who loved Clive; who should have married him. She had had to tell her that very evening when she came in for a practice. Standing there in the twilit room, still, gentle, unprotesting, her violin hanging by her side, she had received the blow.—‘Clive is engaged to be married, Celia;—to a girl none of us know.’ So she had phrased it, controlling the trembling of her voice. ‘Her name is Hester Blakeston. She’s a journalist.—You must come and meet her next Monday, for they are to be married very soon.’ And then, seeing the girl’s brave smile, bitterness had broken from her: ‘I’m afraid I shall never forgive her for taking him from you,’ she had said.

‘But she hasn’t taken him from me,’ Celia answered quickly. ‘I shall always care for him more than for anybody;—but he never cared for me in that way.’ And as Monica stood silent, she added, looking intently at her:—‘Oh, Monica, don’t start wrong!’

Celia had seen her as starting wrong from the very beginning; even after her own meeting with Hester she had seen her friend as wrong. And, of