“I’ve been grilled all right; out on the downs,” he said. “But it’s more like cold storage just now, with these frosts at night. Yes; the big cup, please. I’m famished for tea. Ah! that’s something like! It smells like your rose outside. I sniffed it as I waited at the door. Wonderful for such a late blooming.”
“Isn’t it,” said Mrs. Averil. “And I only put it in last autumn. It’s doing beautifully; but I’ve cherished it. And now tell us about Palgrave.”
He felt reluctant to tell about Palgrave. The impression that remained with him of Palgrave was that impression of beauty and distortion and he did not want to have to disentangle his feelings or to seem to put Palgrave in the wrong. It was so sweet, too, after the long, chilly drive over the empty uplands, to sit here and forget the war, although it was for scenes like this, for girls like Nancy, women like Mrs. Averil—with so much else—that the war was so worth fighting. He turned his thoughts back to the realities that underlay the happy appearances and was aware, as he forced himself to tell, of what must seem a note of advocacy in his voice. “He can’t think differently, I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s self-sacrifice, not selfishness, that is moving him.”
“He can’t think differently while Adrienne is living there,” said Mrs. Averil. “He didn’t tell you, I suppose, that she has now taken up her abode in Oxford in order to study philosophy with him?”
He was rather uncomfortably aware of the disingenuousness that must now be made apparent in his avoidance of all mention of Adrienne.
“I saw her,” he said, and he knew that it was lamely. “She was there when I got there.”
“You saw her!” Mrs. Averil exclaimed. “But then, of course you didn’t convince him. I might have known it. Of course she would not let you see him alone.”
“But she did let me see him alone. That was what she wanted. And she was there only in order to tell me what she wanted. She wants him to go.”
Mrs. Averil was eyeing him with such astonishment that he turned to Nancy with his explanations. But Mrs. Averil would not leave him to Nancy’s sympathy. “It’s rather late in the day for her to want him to go,” she said. “She may be sorry for what she’s done; but it’s her work.”
“Well, she’s sorry for her work. That’s what it comes to. And I’m sorry for her,” said Oldmeadow.