‘If there is such a crumb anywhere, trust you to find it! What a blessing you are to us, Keith!’ As his hand slipped from her shoulder she caught and held it a minute. Then her thoughts went back to her son. ‘I wonder—will he ever have eyes for Sheila again, after this?’
‘More likely after this than before. Sheila’s a born mother-woman, a little Sister of Compassion. And we men are such fools, that we’re very apt to overlook the beauty of that type till we’ve suffered a few hard knocks from the other sort. The revulsion from that type, when it comes, is curiously complete. But it takes time. As for our Sheila, whether she would have him, after this, is another matter.’
Helen sighed. ‘I can’t forgive Maurice yet,’ she said. ‘I wonder if he’ll enlist?’ And their talk slid back to the one all-absorbing subject—the War.
As for Mark, he spent that interminable afternoon tramping endlessly, aimlessly over the hills; hoping by the mechanical motion to deaden thought and ease the pain within. Where all memory was intolerable, it hurt him most to recall how cruelly she had tempted him by tone and touch; as it were bribing him to be false to his own convictions. The whole thing bewildered almost as much as it hurt him. There were moments when he came near to hating her; proof, though he did not realise it, that the love she evoked was strongly tinctured with baser metal.
And all the while Bobs, the incurably faithful, trotted to heel or gambolled coquettishly under his master’s eyes without eliciting a word or caress.
Hunger and lengthening shadows drew him back at last to the home he loved yet now acutely desired to avoid. She had poisoned even that. Yet how his heart ached for her! How the unregenerate blood in his veins craved the touch of her lips and hands!
He reached his study without encountering anything more human than a stray housemaid; and there the first thing he lighted on was his own tender and beautiful little Study of Contemplation. Standing just inside the door, he feasted his eyes on the soft, still face, the small head with its close-fitting cap of hair and the long-limbed grace of her figure. Then rage flamed in him. He felt like smashing the thing with a hammer and flinging away the pieces as he had flung away her ring. A mere pulse-beat of hesitation saved him and the artist prevailed over the man. He could not murder the work of his hands. Later on, he would give it to Maurice to wean him from the sin of impressionism. Meanwhile, he lifted it as tenderly as he would have touched the original, put it away in a corner cupboard and turned the key.
He had scarcely done so when he heard his mother outside.
‘Open the door, dear,’ she said. ‘My hands are full.’
He opened it and relieved her of a tray set out with appetising food and wine.