Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day. Such was Helena’s longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: “Two hundred and forty miles—two hundred and forty miles.”
XXV
Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice, who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of angry hysteria.
“When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?” she had asked him coldly.
He knew she was wondering about money.
“Tomorrow—if ever,” he had answered.
She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger flashed out like sudden lightning at his “if ever”.
“What do you think you can do?” she cried. “For I think you have done enough. We can’t do as we like altogether—indeed, indeed we cannot. You have had your fling, haven’t you? You have had your fling, and you want to keep on. But there’s more than one person in the world. Remember that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they? You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be responsible for your children, do you think?”
“I said nothing about shirking the engagement,” replied Siegmund, very coldly.