She told me things, and they so joined and welded together other things that lay disconnected in my memory, that it seemed to me I had always known what she told me. And yet indeed I had not known nor suspected it, save perhaps for a luminous, transitory suspicion ever and again.
She made me see how life had shaped her. She told me of her girlhood after I had known her. “We were poor and pretending and managing. We hacked about on visits and things. I ought to have married. The chances I had weren’t particularly good chances. I didn’t like ’em.”
She paused. “Then Carnaby came along.”
I remained quite still. She spoke now with downcast eyes, and one finger just touching the water.
“One gets bored, bored beyond redemption. One does about to these huge expensive houses I suppose—the scale’s immense. One makes one’s self useful to the other women, and agreeable to the men. One has to dress.... One has food and exercise and leisure, It’s the leisure, and the space, and the blank opportunity it seems a sin not to fill. Carnaby isn’t like the other men. He’s bigger.... They go about making love. Everybody’s making love. I did.... And I don’t do things by halves.”
She stopped.
“You knew?”—she asked, looking up, quite steadily. I nodded.
“Since when?”
“Those last days.... It hasn’t seemed to matter really. I was a little surprised.”
She looked at me quietly. “Cothope knew,” she said. “By instinct. I could feel it.”