Lady Grote instantly forgave those rude remarks about her colour.
“My darling, of course. Will you be in to tea or lunch or dinner? If not, I shall have to come and see you wherever you are. I hope it’s not disreputable, or an A.B.C. shop.”
“No, I’ll be in at half-past four and we’ll have tea together, shall we?”
“Yes, dear; that will be lovely,” said she, wondering exactly who she would have to put off. She knew the day was fitted together like a mosaic. “Half-past four, then.”
For a long time after Robin had left her she sat in a state of belated indecision. She knew that he would have come down to Grote with a word of urging from her, and even while he had said as much, she had made up her mind that she would not utter it. She had quite forgotten, if she had ever known it, that he was going back to Cambridge to-day, and fully expected that he would come down to Grote with her. But he was not going to do that, and the moment she knew that, she knew also whom she was meaning to ask there. Of course she was to be at the opera on Saturday night and after the opera it would be very pleasant to have that hour’s cool drive down to Grote, instead of stopping in London that night and driving down on Sunday morning.
Robin would have driven down with her had he been coming, and they would have had a morning on the river together, while the other two amused themselves or each other. But Robin was not coming, it was therefore perfectly reasonable for her to find somebody who would drive down with her on Saturday night, or on Sunday morning, and complete the quartette.
That all sounded reasonable enough, but she knew that from beginning to end of it there lurked in it an essential insincerity. With two such old friends as Lord Thorley and Gracie, she was perfectly well aware that there was not the smallest need to look for a fourth, as far as companionship for any of them went. How often, she wondered, had they three spent a Sunday together perfectly content with each other? Naturally, Robin would come, if he had nothing else to do, but if he had, there could not be a more gratuitous proceeding than to look for somebody else merely for the sake of an even number. Should she still ask him to put off going to Cambridge till Monday and so deprive herself of her excuse for asking somebody else? It was not yet too late; he would still be in his room opposite, dressing. But she knew she was meaning to do nothing of the kind.
Obstinate questionings.... Why was it that he could have a rowdy supper-party, getting home at four in the morning, after goodness only knew what adventures, and yet somehow have no trace of it all in the morning, except what a cold bath and some soap would remove? If anything, it was rather suitable than otherwise, according to the code of the world in general, that a boy should go rampaging about, and wipe the whole affair off his mouth like a fringe of froth. No one with any sense would dream of blaming him for it, anyhow; it did not make his nature the least less wholesome. Was it just the lightness, the gaiety of youth that passed such things through the filter of itself, so that when they reached his real self they were clear and unmuddied. Or was it because a man, by some curious device of nature’s, could, within reason, do what he chose, and yet retain his own colour, whereas a woman was like a chameleon, and took on, at any rate in a much higher degree than a man, the colour of her conduct? Women were flesh and blood, no less than men, and if by the limitations of a loveless marriage she was uncared for and unsatisfied, must she acquiesce in so unreasonable a verdict? Of course she had to care; there was nothing so odious or so degrading as passion in cold blood. But passion in hot blood was a vastly different thing; to desire was a test of being alive.
She had no idea why she hesitated. Some scruple hitherto quite foreign to her nature seemed to have germinated within her. Was it connected with that moment just now, when, with Robin seated on the arm of her chair, and showing a good deal of leg, she had had so undimmed a vision of herself as a young mother, and of him as that adorable soft little burden, fruit of her rapture and her pain.
And then—well, so soon after that, such passion as there had ever been between herself and her husband grew as cold as the extinct craters of the moon. What was the use of trying to warm yourself by moonlight? Neither of them had attempted so preposterous a proceeding. And yet warmth was the prime essential of life to those who had the temperament for loving, and for being desired. It puzzled her to know why, after so many years of taking these things for granted, she should suddenly begin to question their validity.