‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?’
Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....
‘You mustn’t love anybody,’ said Jennifer. ‘I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.’ Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith’s lifted face. ‘I love you.’
And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power.
When the longer days came and Martin wrote to ask her to come for a walk one Sunday, she had another engagement and regretfully refused; and after that he wrote to tell her to bring a friend to a river picnic with him and another young man. She brought Jennifer; and Jennifer flirted broadly with the other young man; and the picnic was not a success.
After that the year closed without sight or sign of him; and she forgot to care.
6
Gradually Judith and Jennifer drew around them an outer circle of about half a dozen; and these gathered for conversation in Jennifer’s room every evening. That untidy luxuriant room, flickering with firelight, smelling of oranges and chrysanthemums, was always tacitly chosen as a meeting-place; for something of the magnetism of its owner seemed to be diffused in it, spreading a glow, drawing tired heads and bodies there to be refreshed.