"Perhaps because one's sure of getting it." She tried to smile into his eyes and coquette with him as she had used to do. But he was like a house with shuttered windows. She trembled and went on: "Well, we talked. He asked a lot about you. Dear, you can't think what it meant to him not to have you with him. You don't care about children. I've been worried about that sometimes. But that'll come. I'm sure it will. But men like him ache for sons. If they haven't got them they feel like a mare that's missed her spring. Daughters don't matter. That's because a son's a happier thing than a daughter—there's something a little sad about women, don't you think, Richard? I suppose it's something to do with this business of having children—and men like that do so love happiness. He had coveted you most terribly when he saw you about the lanes. Truly he had. Then he said he felt tired, and he lay down on the couch. I covered him with a rug, and he had a little sleep. Then he woke up and said he must go because there was a solicitor coming at four, and he was going to settle everything so that it was all right for you and me. Then we said good-bye. And on the step he turned round and asked if I thought you would like a Sealyham pup. And I said I thought you would."
"Mother, it wasn't Punch?"
"Yes. It was Punch."
She noted the murderous gesture of his hands with bitter rapture. He had loved that dog, but now he wished he could hail it out of death so that he could send it back there cruelly. He was then capable of rooting up old affections. She was not permitted to hope for anything better.
She pretended anger. "You've taken more than a dog from him. You know that it's his money that's made life so easy for us."
"I should have had that by right. And you should have been at Torque Hall."
The thought of what Torque Hall would have been at this hour if he had, so full of lovely sleeping sons and daughters, made her sigh. She went on dully: "Well, that's all. He turned at the gate and waved good-bye. And the next day when you came in from school you told me he was dead." For a time she looked down into the depths of her old sorrow. When she raised her eyes, she was appalled by his harsh refusal to believe that there was any beauty in her story, and she forgot why she was telling it, and stammered out: "Richard, Richard, don't you understand? Don't you feel about Ellen that there was a part of you that loved her long before you ever met? It was like that with Harry and me. There was a part in each of us that loved the other long before we knew each other—and though Harry left me and I was bitter against him, it didn't matter. That part of us went on loving all the time, and making something—something—" Her hands fluttered before her; she gasped for some image to express the high spiritual business that had been afoot, and her eyes rolled in ecstasy till they met his cold glance. "It is so!" she cried defiantly.
The silence throbbed and was hot. She dropped her head on her hand and envied the quiet, moonlit marshes.
He shrugged his shoulders and moved towards the door. "I'm going to bed," he said.
"That's right," she agreed, and rose and began to clear the table. Uneasily he stood and watched her.