“And I haven’t any at all,” said Yvonne, smiling. “And oh! you don’t know what a comfort it would be to have a woman to go to now and then!”
The visit left Yvonne thoughtful and happy. A new feeling towards Joyce budded in her heart and the process was accompanied by tiny shocks of tender resentment. So conscious was she of this, that that evening whilst Joyce was working in the armchair opposite to her, she suddenly broke into a little musical laugh. He looked up and caught the reflection of her smile.
“What is amusing you, Yvonne?”
She still smiled, but a deep red flush showed beneath her dark skin.
“My thoughts,” she said, in a tone that admitted of no further question.
Yet she would have liked to tell him. It was so humorous that she should feel angry because he did not fall in love with her.
Sometimes light moods are delicate indexes to far-away, unknown commotions. Afterwards, in the serious moments, when the birdlike inconsequence fled away from her and she realised herself as a grown woman to whom had come the knowledge of life, this that she had laughed and blushed over appeared sad and painful. It kept her awake sometimes at nights. Once she got out of bed, lit her candle, and looked closely at her face in the glass. But she returned comforted. She was not getting old and unattractive.
Yet a vague ferment in her nature began to puzzle her sorely. Her mind, that was once as simple as a child’s and as clear as spring water, seemed now tangled with many complexities; she saw into it, as in a glass, darkly. Life, for the first time appeared to her incomplete. She was weighed down with a sense of failure. The very facts that had caused the happy possibility of her comradeship with Joyce smote her as proofs of the inadequacy of her own womanhood. The essential fierce vanity of sex was touched.
Once only before had she used her sex as a weapon—on that miserable day at Ostend, to keep Everard by her side. Then she had felt the fire of shame. Now she was tempted to use it again, and the shame burned deeper.
And Joyce, familiarised with the daily sweetness of her companionship, did not notice the gradually stealing increase of tenderness in her ways.