Clytie went back to her seat by the window and looked out upon the market-sellers. But she did not see much, as tears stood in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
She did not tell Mrs. Farquharson of this incident, but kept it in her heart as a secret and strange revelation of life—something precious, mysterious, awful. During her drive with the others in the afternoon she was strangely silent. Kent rallied her on her depression in his bluff, kind-hearted manner. She smiled absently, complained of a headache, then shivered with a wave of recollection. For days the spectre haunted her, sometimes looking at her through the light blue eyes of the girl, and sometimes taking a dual form, in which the coarse drudge features of the mother of Jack, the model, were dimly visible. And a question hummed in her ears: “Was this the aspect of life that men kept so jealously hidden from women?”
But Clytie was young and vigorous, with fresh bright blood leaping in her veins. The thrill of the salt breeze and the whole-hearted laughter of her friends soon prevented these imaginings from becoming morbid, and gradually the first sharp impression dulled more or less down to the level of her other experiences of things. She gave herself up again to the freedom and gaiety of the trip, to the unfeigned delight of Kent, who had been beginning to wonder whether, for unknown reasons, some coolness had arisen between them.
He forbore to allude to the subject until the night when they were all returning together from St. Malo to Southampton. He had found her a sheltered corner of the upper deck, rigged up a screen of rugs, comfortably established her in a canvas chair with many wraps. Most of the passengers had gone below. They were almost alone. The voices of two men in an opposite corner came vaguely out of the darkness. All was still save for the continuous rattle and wash, which at sea forms a strange kind of silence in itself.
“Aren't you sorry it is over?” asked Clytie from the dimness of her wraps. “We did nothing very wonderful, but it has been very pleasant—a thing to look back upon.”
“'A garnered joy for after-time.'”
“You are waxing poetical.”
“Oh, that's Wither. He was poetical in his youth. You would hardly think it of him. I have always thought that line rather pretty. Anyhow, it is true in the present case.”
“And we haven't quarrelled,” said Clytie, “in spite of the maxim, 'If you want to lose a friend, travel with him.' But I don't think I could quarrel with you. You wrap yourself round with such imperturbable superiority.”
“The metaphor is mixed, but proceed,” interrupted Kent.