united and he felt an increase of his dull pain at the sight of their
comeliness, the suspicion of their likeness to each other. 'I suppose
not,' Charles said, and after that no one spoke, as though it were
impossible to find a light word, and unnecessary.

Each one was aware of conflict, of something fierce and silent going
on, but it was Rose who understood the situation best and Charles who
understood it least. His feelings were torturing but simple. He wanted
Henrietta and he could not get her: he did not please her, and that
Sales, that Philistine, that handsome, well-made, sulky-looking beggar
knew how to do it.

But Rose was conscious of the working of four minds: there was her
own, sore with the past and troubled by a present in which her lover
concealed his discomfiture under the easy sullenness of his pose. He,
too, had the past shared with her to haunt him, but he had also a
present bright with Henrietta's allurements yet darkly streaked with
prohibitions, struggles and surrenders, and Rose saw that the worst
tragedy was his and hers. It must not be Henrietta's. In their youth
she and Francis had misunderstood, and in their maturity they had
failed, each other; it was the fault of neither and Henrietta must not
be the victim of their folly. Looking at the big fan of black feathers
spread on her knee, Rose smiled a little, with a maternal tenderness.
Henrietta was her father's daughter, wilful and lovable, but she was
also the daughter of that mother who had been good and loving.
Henrietta had her father's passion for excitement but, being a woman,
she had the greater need of being loved, and Rose raised her eyes and
looked at Charles with an ironical appreciation of his worthiness, of
his comicality. She saw him with Henrietta's eyes, and her white
shoulders lifted and dropped in resignation. Then she looked at