But I must say, Ted 'ud give in to me sometimes, when I was set on a thing,
and in the wrong. So I suppose it cuts both ways.'
`And that's how you are with all your patients?' asked Connie.
`Oh, That's different. I don't care at all, in the same way. I know
what's good for them, or I try to, and then I just contrive to manage them
for their own good. It's not like anybody as you're really fond of. It's
quite different. Once you've been really fond of a man, you can be
affectionate to almost any man, if he needs you at all. But it's not the
same thing. You don't really care. I doubt, once you've really cared, if you
can ever really care again.'
These words frightened Connie.
`Do you think one can only care once?' she asked.
`Or never. Most women never care, never begin to. They don't know what
it means. Nor men either. But when I see a woman as cares, my heart stands
still for her.'
`And do you think men easily take offence?'
`Yes! If you wound them on their pride. But aren't women the same? Only
our two prides are a bit different.'
Connie pondered this. She began again to have some misgiving about her
gag away. After all, was she not giving her man the go-by, if only for a
short time? And he knew it. That's why he was so queer and sarcastic.
Still! the human existence is a good deal controlled by the machine of
external circumstance. She was in the power of this machine. She couldn't
extricate herself all in five minutes. She didn't even want to.
Hilda arrived in good time on Thursday morning, in a nimble two-seater
car, with her suit-case strapped firmly behind. She looked as demure and
maidenly as ever, but she had the same will of her own. She had the very
hell of a will of her own, as her husband had found out. But the husband was
now divorcing her.
Yes, she even made it easy for him to do that, though she had no lover.
For the time being, she was `off' men. She was very well content to be quite
her own mistress: and mistress of her two children, whom she was going to
bring up `properly', whatever that may mean.
Connie was only allowed a suit-case, also. But she had sent on a trunk
to her father, who was going by train. No use taking a car to Venice. And
Italy much too hot to motor in, in July. He was going comfortably by train.
He had just come down from Scotland.
So, like a demure arcadian field-marshal, Hilda arranged the material
part of the journey. She and Connie sat in the upstairs room, chatting.
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>