After all, they cannot get off the ship, and there
is nothing elseto do.
Jean seemed expectingher cub to come round the
corner.
Why you should listen to anyone will always be a
mystery. One twitch ofNatures lip would have been more to her than all human
sympathy.
The leaves had thickened round it, and that was
allthe change.
From the moment shestepped out Dinny was lost in
it.
She wanted desperately these few minutes of
abandonment. Lady Mont, who was arranging some flowers in a Chinese ginger
jar,dropped them and turned round. She might never get again the chance ofthat
particular nick, as Jack Muskham would call it.
There was a dim figure by the front door, and he
said gently:Is that you, Dinny?
So she laymotionless, until the dog came and licked
her cheek. In the tree above her head a bird chirped once. There he had to sit down
at the foot of the stairs before hecould find strength to climb. She wrote rapidly a
kind of formula: Such a pleasure if, etc. He satdown at his bureau and wrote:I am
going away for good.
I should be sorry to leave here, if I cant come
with you. After a moment she relaxed against him, still holding thescarf so that it
veiled her face and head.
Clare was silent,then added suddenly, with a toss
back of her head: Quiteimpossible! He was at the best age in life,and would be for
another two years until he went to school.
But does anybody ever get anything else nowadays?
And, as is customary in the case ofanothers bereavement, she could only think of
flowers. Take him his run, he said, and went on up the stairs.
It was a graveintent gaze, as if he were committing
that face finally to heart. When he had kissed her and gone, Fleur went up to the
nurseries. For smoke was burnttissue, and where fire had raged there was alteration.
When she once got home shemust watch every word and look, must smile and smile, and
shownothing! What werethey jabbering about now in Parliament?
In her the physical without the spiritual seemed
out ofplace.
Make it plain theres no question of that. Ears of a
weasel, nose of a fox to hear and scent outwhat was stirring! Her father was
standing with the look on hisface that she called waiting for Mother.