Mrs. Aldwinkle only sighed and shook her head. She had started loving because she believed in love, because she wanted to love and because a romantic opportunity had presented itself. She had rescued a Poet from death. How could she help loving him? The circumstances, the person were her invention; she had fallen in love, deliberately almost, with the figments of her own imagination. But there was no deliberately falling out again. The romantic yearnings had aroused those profounder instincts of which they were but the polite and literary emanation. The man was young, was beautiful—these were facts, not imaginings. These deep desires once started by the conscious mind from their sleep, once made aware of their quarry, how could they be held back? “He is a poet. For the love of poetry, for the love of passion and because I saved him from death, I love him.” If that had been all, it might have been possible for Mrs. Aldwinkle to take Irene’s advice. But from the obscure caves of her being another voice was speaking. “He is young, he is beautiful. The days are so few and short. I am growing old. My body is thirsty.” How could she cease to think of him?
“And suppose he did come to love me a little,” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on, taking a perverse delight in tormenting herself in every possible way, “suppose he should come to love me just a little for what I am and think and do—should come to love me because, to begin with, I love him and admire his work, and because I understand what an artist feels and can sympathise with him—suppose all that, wouldn’t he be repelled at the same time by the fact that I’m old?” She peered into the mirror. “My face looks terribly old,” she said.
“No, no,” protested Irene encouragingly.
“He’d be disgusted,” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on. “It would be enough to drive him away even if he were attracted in some other way.” She sighed profoundly. The tears trickled slowly down her sagging cheeks.
“Don’t talk like that, Aunt Lilian,” Irene implored her. “Don’t talk like that.” She felt the tears coming into her own eyes. At that moment she would have done anything, given anything to make Aunt Lilian happy. She threw her arms round Mrs. Aldwinkle’s neck and kissed her. “Don’t be unhappy,” she whispered. “Don’t think any more about it. What does it matter about that man? What does it matter? You must think only of the people who do love you. I love you, Aunt Lilian. So much, so much.”
Mrs. Aldwinkle suffered herself to be a little comforted. She dried her eyes. “I shall make myself look still uglier,” she said, “if I go on crying.” There was a silence. Irene went on brushing her aunt’s hair; she hoped that Aunt Lilian had turned her thoughts elsewhere.
“At any rate,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle at last, breaking the long silence, “my body is still young.”
Irene was distressed. Why couldn’t Aunt Lilian think of something else? But her distress turned into an uneasy sense of embarrassment and shame as Mrs. Aldwinkle pursued the subject started by her last words into more and more intimate detail. In spite of her five years’ training in Aunt Lilian’s school, Irene felt profoundly shocked.