"I have," said Hilda, who had seen Charlie at George's bedside when nobody knew whether George would live or die.
And while they were talking about Charlie and about Janet, who was now living with her brother at Ealing, the sounds of George stoking the furnace below came dully up through the floor-boards.
"If you and George are going away," asked Ingpen, "what'll happen to his worship--with not a servant in the house?"
This important point had been occupying Edwin's mind ever since Hilda had first announced her intention to go to London. But he had not mentioned it to her, nor she to him, their relations being rather delicate. It had, for him, only an academic interest, since he had determined that she should not go to London on the morrow. Nevertheless he awaited anxiously the reply.
Hilda answered with composure:
"I'm hoping he'll come with us."
He had been prepared for anything but this. The proposition was monstrously impossible. Could a man leave his works at a moment's notice? The notion was utterly absurd.
"That's quite out of the question," he said at once. He was absolutely sincere. The effect of Ingpen's discourse was, however, such as to upset the assured dignity of his pronouncement; for the decision was simply an illustration of Ingpen's theory concerning him. He blushed.
"Why is it out of the question?" demanded Hilda, inimically gazing at him.
She had lost her lenient attitude towards him of the afternoon. Nevertheless, reflecting upon Tertius Ingpen's indictment of the usual happy marriage, she had been planning the expedition to London as a revival of romance in their lives. She saw it as a marvellous rejuvenating experience. When she thought of all that she had suffered, and all that Edwin had suffered, in order that they might come together, she was quite desolated by the prosaic flatness of the ultimate result. Was it to attain their present stolid existence that they had endured affliction for a decade? She wanted passionately to break the mysterious bands that held them both back from ecstasy and romance. And he would not help her. He would not enter into her desire. She had known that he would refuse. He refused everything--he was so set in his own way. Resentment radiated from her.