“And you will confirm that appointment?” his mother asked again, without looking round, an interesting document in Slinker’s theatrical collection having sprung upon her.
“Very well. I will write at once. No doubt it will be all right. And if there’s nothing further——”
In the library he drew out the photograph and looked curiously at the gravely-aloof face.
“Why did I save you, I wonder?” he asked both of it and of himself. “Because you wanted to come away so very badly, I suppose. Yet you went of your own free will. Why, oh, why did you go? Couldn’t you feel that it was all wrong? I’m not blaming you, of course—and yet I am blaming you—I am! Almost anybody else might have done it, but not you. You shouldn’t have taken the risk.”
He dropped it into a drawer, and turned the key.
CHAPTER VIII
Black coat-tails came whisking up Heron drive on a bicycle, and Verity tore to the drawing-room to set about her usual preparations.
From some obscure corner a dusty Doll’s House was dragged into the light of day; Anne Veronica scuttled into position beside the latest problem novel, Woman Enthroned; Zola, Oscar Wilde and Cicely Hamilton shared the shelter of the same chrysanthemum; while from the silver table Mrs. Pankhurst addressed the world at large.
The hall-door opened, and Verity, scattering a few Mormon tracts at random over the sofa, flung herself at the piano and dashed into the new war-song—“Way for the Women!” just as the Vicar was announced; only to be conscious, as she rose to greet him, of the utter futility of her dramatic efforts.
“The man sees nothing but the inside of his own head!” she told herself, as she welcomed him prettily, and watched him settle himself among the Mormons. “It’s a real waste of time trying to be artistic with him, and I think I’d better take Larry’s advice and give it up.”