He would beg her to accept his aunt’s invitations, to accompany Mary when she went to Passy:
‘Don’t you like the old thing? Mary likes her all right—why won’t you come? It’s so mean of you, Stephen. It’s not half as much fun when you’re not there.’ He would honestly think that he was speaking the truth, that the party or the luncheon or whatever it might be, was not half as much fun for him without Stephen.
But Stephen always made her work an excuse: ‘My dear, I’m trying to finish a novel. I seem to have been at it for years and years; it’s growing hoary like Rip Van Winkle.’
2
There were times when their friendship seemed well-nigh perfect, the perfect thing that they would have it to be, and on such a day of complete understanding, Stephen suddenly spoke to Martin about Morton.
They two were alone together in her study, and she said: ‘There’s something I want to tell you—you must often have wondered why I left my home.’
He nodded: ‘I’ve never quite liked to ask, because I know how you loved the place, how you love it still . . .’
‘Yes, I love it,’ she answered.
Then she let every barrier go down before him, blissfully conscious of what she was doing. Not since Puddle had left her had she been able to talk without restraint of her exile. And once launched she had not the least wish to stop, but must tell him all, omitting no detail save one that honour forbade her to give—she withheld the name of Angela Crossby.
‘It’s so terribly hard on Mary,’ she finished; ‘think of it, Mary’s never seen Morton; she’s not even met Puddle in all these years! Of course Puddle can’t very well come here to stay—how can she and then go back to Morton? And yet I want her to live with my mother . . . But the whole thing seems so outrageous for Mary.’ She went on to talk to him of her father: ‘If my father had lived, I know he’d have helped me. He loved me so much, and he understood—I found out that my father knew all about me, only—’ She hesitated, and then: ‘Perhaps he loved me too much to tell me.’