Page:Dark Hester.djvu/83

clambering roses. Only when they were inside and the dark coolness of the drawing-room enveloped them, did the flame of hatred die. Here, at all events, was the past. Here she could remember Clive, as he had been, before Hester came. He pulled a chair near the window for her. ‘Sit down, Mummy,’ he said gently. ‘How delicious it is in here.’

‘No; you sit down, my dear. We’ll have a little more light for our tea-party.’ She went to the blinds. She must give herself time to see where she stood. A horrible dread, cold after the fierceness, crept over her. Had she not alienated Clive by her perversity? He must see it as perversity.

‘Clive,’ she said—a woman when she has shown herself as perverse must not supplicate, yet she knew that under her light tone there was supplication:—‘you and Hester will have to come and spend a great many evenings with me.—Give me an inch, and I’ll take an ell, I’m afraid you’ll feel! They have been rather lonely;—more lonely than I could have realized. And even when you can’t come, it will be everything to know that you are hardly a mile away. — I believe that you could almost hear me if I called you from my bedroom window.’

‘It will be everything to me, too,’ said Clive, still