“And now I shall never see him again!”
II
She saw him again three evenings afterwards. His mother wrote, cordially bidding her to dinner. Deb, with every inclination to behave like a coward and refuse, yet felt it incumbent upon her to “face the music.”... She had eaten at the Phillips’ table every day and sometimes twice a day, for a fortnight. But she could not help considering the invitation a mistake in tactics—What more could they want of her, now?
She consulted Richard: “D’you think I need go? It’ll be like a funeral. I feel I ought to bring a wreath.”
“Sure you don’t want him?” asked Richard gravely.
“No—no—no. I should have to go to Synagogue, and dine with the whole family at Mrs Phillips’ every single night—they never seem, any of them, to dine at their own houses. And have a Visitors’ Day. And do good works; not good work, but good works. And never read anything except the Faerie Queene and Rosa Nouchette Carey, and the newspaper leaders. And give up all my pals, because they’re a bad lot. And be accountable to a man for my freaks.’
“Well—that’s just being married, isn’t it?”
“It’s just being married to Samson Phillips—and that’s being married three times thick. I say—I do believe you’re in favour of it.”
Richard said he did not want to force her inclinations. He was perfectly serious about it; these lapses overtook him at times.
She curled her arms round the balustrade post—their conversation took place at the foot of the Montagu Hall main staircase—and put her chin down on her arms and said: “Dear old boy, I warn you that you and father and Aunt Stella would be taken over by the Phillips family-life, and be absorbed like ink into blotting-paper. I daresay grandfather would manage to stand out....”