"Did you get my letter?"
"Yes."
"I love you, I love you, I love you." This in a hoarse whisper.
"Johnny--you mustn't--you know--we can't--you know I oughtn't----"
They passed through into the Cathedral.
Mrs. Bentinck-Major came with Miss Ronder, slowly, across the grass. It was not necessary for them to hurry because they knew that their seats were reserved for them. Mrs. Bentinck-Major thought Miss Ronder "queer" because of the clever things that she said and of the odd fashion in which she always dressed. To say anything clever was, with Mrs. Bentinck-Major, at once to be classed as "queer."
"It is hot!"
Miss Ronder, thin and piky above her stiff white collar, looked immaculately cool. "A lovely day," she said, sniffing the colour and the warmth, and loving it.
Mrs. Bentinck-Major was thinking of the Brandon scandal, but it was one of her habits never to let her left-hand voice know what her right-hand brain was doing. Secretly she often wondered about sexual things--what people really did, whether they enjoyed what they did, and whether she would have enjoyed the same things had life gone that way with her instead of leading her to Bentinck-Major.
But she never, never spoke of such things. She was thinking now of Mrs. Brandon and Morris. They said that some one had found a letter, a disgraceful letter. How extraordinary!