She Came Back

Lyndall said, “No.” She stood up, moving slowly and a little stiffly, because if she let them, her knees would tremble. She controlled them very carefully, but the effort made her feel like one of those stiff, jointed dolls.

When she was on her feet, she said gently,

“You must do what she wants. You did love her. It will come back again.”

“Will it? On revient toujours à ses premiers amours. I have always thought that a particularly crass sort of lie. I told you we had gone in opposite directions. Lyn, even now, with evidence that I am bound to accept, I tell you she isn’t A

“Who is she?”

“A stranger. I can’t feel that we have ever shared a single experience-not even when she tells me things which only A

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

There was a long, heavy silence. It weighed on the room, it weighed upon their hearts. Tomorrow she would be gone.

They had nothing more to say to one another, because that said everything. If he put out his hand it would touch her. But he couldn’t put it out. They were already divided, and with every moment of that silence each could see the other receding, whilst between them thought and feeling wrenched and broke.

When Milly Armitage came in, neither had moved from where they stood, yet each had travelled a long way.

CHAPTER 14

The nine days’ wonder died down in the Press. On the whole it had been discreet. A

A

Then she must have her hair waved and set again, and a facial treatment, and a manicure. It was going to be a very full day indeed, but she would have looked forward to it if it hadn’t been for the letter in her bag. She kept telling herself that it was tiresome but no more.

The matter could be dealt with easily enough. She could have dealt with it herself as far as that went. Easy enough to write, perhaps in the third person, something on the lines of “Lady Jocelyn is afraid that there really is not anything she could add to what has appeared in the papers with regard to the death of A

She had a fleeting regret that she had not written and posted just such a letter. After all, who was to know that Nellie Collins had ever written to her, or she to Nellie Collins? And even as the thought was in her mind, she knew that she couldn’t hide this or anything else, and that the answer she wrote, or whether she wrote an answer at all, was part of a pattern which was none of her designing-a very strict pattern to which she would be most strictly kept. Just for a moment she had something like a black-out. It was a very strange sensation-between one second and the next a shock like the shock of concussion, leaving her numb, dazed, and reluctant. It passed, and afterwards she would have been frightened if she had let herself think about it.

Fortunately, she had a great many other things to think about. There were still excellent clothes to be got, but you had to look for them, and they were a shocking price. She gave twenty-five pounds for a coat and skirt in a good Scotch tweed, sandy beige with a brown line and a brown fleck- very becoming. Eighteen coupons gone. A pair of brown outdoor shoes, and a pair for the house-fourteen. Six pairs of stockings-another eighteen. She found herself thinking less of the price of a garment than of the number of coupons that had to be given up.

It was three in the afternoon before she really had time to remember that she had been afraid. She stood hesitating imperceptibly between the rather narrow windows which displayed on the one side a smiling wax model with an elaborately dressed head of golden hair, and on the other a snowy hand with tinted nails lying on a velvet cushion. The back of both windows was curtained in the very bright shade called bleu de roi. The cushion under the hand and the golden-haired lady’s draperies were of an equally bright rose colour. A gold scroll over the door bore the name Félise. A

If she had hesitated a little longer, or if she had not hesitated at all, some things might have happened differently, and some might not have happened at all. If she had gone straight in, Lyndall would not have seen her. If she had waited a little longer, Lyndall would have caught her up before she entered the shop, in which case she probably would not have kept her appointment with Mr. Felix, and she might, just possibly she might, have answered Nellie Collins’ letter herself.

As it was, Lyn’s moment of startled recognition brought her to a standstill on the opposite pavement just too late for her to be sure that it was A

She had to wait whilst what seemed like an endless stream of traffic went by. By the time she managed to cross over, her courage had gone cold, but it held. She was not yet sure that it was A

She went in, and saw two women waiting by the counter, and a buxom assistant reaching something off an upper shelf with her back turned to the shop. Neither of the two women was A