‘Yes, I have.’ Gladys was at once eager and piteous. ‘Didn’t I tell you before? I knew, I knew. Something told me all along, and I tried to tell him but I couldn’t make him understand. It was only a feeling—but you know what I mean?’
‘Who did you try to tell?’
‘Penderel, of course. When we were outside. That’s what I was going to tell you, I mean when I said you’d know what’s the matter with me—because, you see—Oh, you know—I love him. We can talk now, can’t we? Yes, we went outside and sat and talked, and then I found it out; came as quick as lightning, sudden but absolutely dead certain.’ Then she added, simply: ‘And you know what it means. You’re in love with your husband, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am.’ This was neither the time nor the place, Margaret felt, for all those delicate reservations that her truthful mind had so often brought out and examined. Then she realised, in a flash, that they no longer appeared to exist. She couldn’t remember what they were. And she didn’t want to remember. ‘I haven’t always thought so,’ she went on. ‘But I am.’
‘I knew you were,’ Gladys whispered. ‘I could tell, always can. But I suppose it doesn’t make you ache any more, does it?’
‘I think,’ said Margaret, slowly, ‘it’s beginning to, again.’
‘It’s funny it’s so different——’ Gladys began, but then broke off. There was a crash outside. ‘My God! Did you hear that? And we can’t do a thing! Has that lunatic come down, do you think? Are they fighting?’
‘I think they must be. It’s horrible, horrible.’
‘And he’s there by himself. The other two haven’t come back. Why don’t they come?’ Gladys pressed her hands together in the darkness.
‘I don’t know,’ Margaret stammered. ‘Something may have happened to them. That beast—Morgan—and Miss Femm.’ Then something seemed to snap inside her. ‘Oh, I can’t bear it, can’t bear it any longer.’ Her legs crumpled like paper and she slipped down the door, sobbing.