"No," said Alex.
She looked at him with despair invading her whole being.
"Good-bye, Cedric. You've been very, very kind to me."
"The taxi is at the door, sir."
"Thank you."
Cedric took his sister into the hall, and she gave a curious, fleeting glance round her at the familiar surroundings, and at the broad staircase where the Clare children had run up and down and played and quarrelled together, in that other existence.
"Good-bye, dear. Write your plans, and come and see us as soon as we get back. It won't be more than a week or two now."
Cedric put her into the waiting taxi, and stood on the steps looking after her as the cab turned out of Clevedon Square. And Alex, crouched into a corner of the swiftly-moving taxi, knew herself capable of any treachery, any moral infamy to which she might be tempted, since Cedric had been right when he said that her sense of honour, of fundamental rectitude, was completely perverted.