Love and hatred

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

The door opened, and Oliver Tropenell came in.

He walked straight to Laura, and took both her hands in his. "You got my cable?" he asked.

And then Laura blushed, overwhelmingly. She had had said nothing of that cable to Mrs. Tropenell.

And as they stood there—Oliver still grasping Laura's hands in his—the mother, looking on, saw with a mixture of joy and of jealous pain that Laura stood before him as if hypnotised, her heavy-lidded blue eyes fixed upwards on his dark, glowing face.

Suddenly they all three heard the at once plaintive and absurd hoot of Lord St. Amant's motor—and it was as if a deep spell had suddenly been broken. Slowly, reluctantly, Oliver released Laura's hands, and Mrs. Tropenell exclaimed in a voice which had a tremor in it: "It's Lord St. Amant, Oliver. I forgot that he had asked himself to dinner to-night. He said he could not come till half-past eight, but I suppose he got away earlier than he expected to do."

And then with the coming into the room of her old friend, life seemed suddenly to become again normal, and though by no means passionless, yet lacking that curious atmosphere of violent, speechless emotion that had been there a moment or two ago. Of the four it was Laura who seemed the most moved. She came up and slipped her hand into Mrs. Tropenell's, holding it tightly, probably unaware that she was doing so.

After the first few words of welcome to Oliver, Lord St. Amant plunged into local talk with Mrs. Tropenell, and as he did so, he looked a little wryly at Laura. Why didn't she move away and talk to Oliver? Why did she stick close like that to Letty—to Letty, with whom he had hoped to spend a quiet, cosy, cheerful evening?

But Laura, for the first time in her life, felt as if she were no longer in full possession of herself. It was as if she had passed into the secret keeping of another human being; she had the sensation that her mind was now in fee to another human mind, her will overawed by another human will. And there was a side to her nature which rebelled against this sudden, quick transference of herself.

With what she now half-realised to have been a kind of self-imposed hypocrisy, she had told herself often, during the last few months, that Oliver and she when they again met would become dear, dear friends. He would be the adorer, she the happy, calm, adored. And that then, after a long probation, perhaps of years, in any case not for a long, long time, she might bring herself half reluctantly, and entirely for his sake, to consider the question of—re-marriage.

But now? Since Oliver had taken her hands in his, and gazed down speechlessly into her eyes, she had known that it was he, not she, would set the pace in their new relationship, and that however sincere his self-imposed restraint and humility. So it was that Laura instinctively clung to Mrs. Tropenell's hand.