“Thoughtless Valeria! Are you always to be my madcap daughter?”
His tone was very fond, and he kissed her and blessed her once more.
Valeria went to her own room.
She sat upon the side of her bed and cried a little.
Everything seemed to be vaguely disappointing and unsatisfactory. What if Owen Quentillian was in love with her? He was very clever, and Val was tired of cleverness. Father was clever—even Flora, in her austere, musical way, was clever. Val supposed grimly that she herself must be clever, if imposed intellectual interests, a wide range of reading, a habit of abstract discussion, could make her so. Nevertheless she was guiltily conscious of desires within herself other than purely academic ones.
Flora was right. Those six months in France had made her different.
She had worked in a canteen, where the preoccupation of everyone had been the procuring and dispensing of primitive things—food, and drink, and warmth. Women had worked with their hands for men who had been fighting, and were going to fight again.
Valeria had been the quickest worker there, one of the most efficient. The manual work, the close contact with material things, had satisfied some craving within herself of which she had not before been actively conscious.
She had learnt to cook and had become proficient with astonishing ease. Scrambled eggs interested her more than herbaceous borders, more than choir practises, more, to her own surprise and shame, than evening readings-aloud at home.
The canteen jokes, elementary, beer-and-tobacco-flavoured, had amused her whole-heartedly. She had laughed, foolishly and mirthfully, for sheer enjoyment, knowing all the time that, judged by the criterion of St. Gwenllian, the jests were pointless, the wit undeserving of the name.