‘Well it would. Not that I disapprove at all of incest, in theory. Yet I must confess my instinct’s against it.’
‘And so’s mine,’ said Martin firmly. ‘Let’s have no more nonsense.’
He bent forward and dismissed the nonsense with a hearty kiss.
That was the last straw. Her mood, stretched finer and finer in the preceding few minutes, snapped. She rolled over away from him and stared into the water.
The tiny brilliant green water-plants and cresses grew up from the mud and pebbles and spread their leaflets below the surface in delicate array, motionless as if under glass. Oh, to slip into the water and become something minute and non-sentient, a sort of fresh water amœba, living peacefully among their thin-spun tangle of whitish roots—now at once, before Martin noticed her disappearance! He would peer and peer into the water, with his red anxious face; and all in vain. In the shadow of his face her unimpressive form would be but the more obscured; and, unmoved, she would stare back at him.
God!—to go mad, crack-brained, fantastic, happy mad; or to be stretched upon a rack in a physical anguish which precluded thought!
‘Tea-time,’ said Martin. ‘What a good afternoon it’s been.’
In the hall they were met with a telegram for Judith. “Decided go abroad this week instead of next. Come home to-morrow. Mother.”
Mamma had grown restless then, a trifle sooner than you had expected; and sent this peremptory summons. What an undreamed-of godsend!
‘You can’t go to-morrow, Judy,’ said Martin, much upset.