“Really?” The beating of her heart shook the things she was holding in her hands.
“Yes. It’s a decision I’ve been approaching for some time. As you know, Mr. Leyton is about to be taken into partnership. I have come to the conclusion that it is best on the whole to move and develop my practice along my own lines.”
So calmly handing out desolation. Here was the counterpart of the glorious weeks. Her carelessly-made living was gone; or horribly reduced. The Orlys alone would not be able to give her a hundred a year.
“When is it to be?”
“Of course, whenever I go, I shall want help.”
“Oh ...”
He went very busily on with his handwashing. She knew exactly how he was smiling, and hidden in her corner smiled back, invisibly, and made unnecessary clatterings to hide the glorious embarrassment. Dismay struck across her joy, revealing the future as a grey, laborious working out of this moment’s blind satisfaction. But joy had spoken first and left her no choice. Startling her with the revelation of the way the roots of her being still centred in him. Joy deeper and more powerfully stirring than the joy of the past weeks. They showed now a spread embroidery of sunlit scenes, powerless, fundamentally irrelevant, excursions off the main road of her life. Committed beyond recall, she faced the prospect of unvarying, grinding experience. The truth hidden below the surfaces of life was to yield itself to her slowly, imperceptibly, unpleasurably.
She got through the necessary things at top speed, anyhow, to avoid underlining his need of her, and ran downstairs.
A letter on the hall table, from Hypo.... Dear Miriam—I’ve headed off that affair. You’ve pulled me out of it. You really have. When can I see you? Just to talk.
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