III.
"Mark, are you coming?"
She was tired of waiting on the flagstones, swinging her stick. She called through the house for him to come. She looked through the rooms, and found him in the study with Mamma. When they saw her they stopped talking suddenly, and Mamma drew herself up and blinked.
Mark shook his head. After all, he couldn't come.
Mamma wanted him. Mamma had him. As long as they lived she would have him. Mamma and Mark were happy together; their happiness tingled, you could feel it tingling, like the happiness of lovers. They didn't want anybody but each other. You existed for them as an object in some unintelligible time and in a space outside their space. The only difference was that Mark knew you were there and Mamma didn't.
She chose the Garthdale road. Yesterday she had gone that way with Mamma and Mark. She had not talked to him, for when she talked the pinched, vexed look came into Mamma's face though she pretended she hadn't heard you. Every now and then Mark had looked at her over his shoulder and said, "Poor Minx." It was as if he said, "I'm sorry, but you see how it is. I can't help it."
And just here, where the moor track touched the road, she had left them, clearing the water-courses, and had gone up towards Karva.
She had looked back and seen them going slowly towards the white sickle of the road, Mark very upright, taut muscles held in to his shortened stride; Mamma pathetic and fragile, in her shawl, moving with a stiff, self-hypnotised air.
Her love for them was a savage pang that cut her eyes and drew her throat tight.
Then suddenly she had heard Mark whooping, and she had run back, whooping and leaping, down the hill to walk with them again.