An Unofficial rose

'How true, said A

'Well done! said Swa

'You are very kind. Thank Clare for the bottled apricots, will you?

The door shut behind him at last. A

But was that not also setting herself free? She had never thought about freedom, it had never been a value to her. Now suddenly, as she felt it to be so vividly desirable, she looked back over her thoughts, trying to doubt them. Where did the corruption lie? Yet, as she reflected, this question seemed less important, consumed, dimmed by a sort of realism, which she still hesitated to dignify with the name of truth. The world had changed and there was no going back. She must live as best she could in the new world. She rolled over on her back and looked at the high white ceiling of the drawing-room, now dusky and yellowish in the rainy afternoon light, and it seemed to her like a lofty Southern sky, infinitely far and blue and hazy with brilliance. She lay there stu

The telephone rang and she pulled herself to her feet at last. It was Mildred ringing up from Seton Blaise to say that she and Felix would be bringing Miranda tomorrow morning. Miranda.

Chapter Twenty-nine

MIRANDA was back at Grayhallock and Pe

It was as if the house feared Miranda. The darkness, the coldness, the dampness of the still rainy weather seemed to gain, from her return, an extra shadow. The house groaned and huddled. Miranda herself was in an evident state of extreme depression and was very short with anyone who came near her. A

He was now tossing on his bed. He had already got up several times, and looked across at the light which was still burning in Miranda's bedroom in the opposite tower. It was not in fact very late. After Miranda retired Pe

The huge coloured country might have been a dream; and Pe

He could not get comfortable. His body ached through and through with desire, producing a sort of perpetual tiredness which was half pleasurable and half painful. He got up again and went to the window. The light was still on in Miranda's room. He put on his dressing-gown and began to wander about his own room. He looked gloomily at the wrecked bed, and at his few books on the white shelf. On the table in a blue vase were roses A

Pe

Pe

Why not? His heart accelerated and he turned back from the window blushing with excitement. He had never entered Miranda's room. She had never asked him up there, and indeed the whole of the other tower had a perilous taboo quality. He was exceedingly frightened by the idea which he had just received. Could he mount the other tower? The notion that he might thereby frighten Miranda made him even more frightened himself. But it was also fearfully attractive; and the next moment he had a vision of himself ru

Things are getting out of hand, Pe