world, but she knew that she would not get them, for leaving Francis
would be like leaving a child. So she told herself, but at the back of
her mind was the certainty that if she went he would soon attach
himself to another's strength--or weakness: yes, to another's
weakness, and she found she could not contemplate that event, less
because she clung to him than because her pride could not tolerate a
substitution which would be an admission of her likeness to other
women. Yet in that very lack of toleration her pride was lowered, and
if she was not clinging to him for her own sake, she was holding on to
her place, her uniqueness, refusing the possibility that another woman
could serve him, as she had served him with pain, with suffering. She
was like a queen who does not love her throne supremely but will not
abdicate, who would rather fail in her appointed place than see
another succeed in it.

For a minute Rose Mallett sat down on the edge of the chair already
occupied by the stick and she pressed both hands against her forehead,
driving back her thoughts. Thinking was dangerous and a folly: it was
a concession to circumstances, and she would concede nothing. She
stood up, looked round for a mirror, remembered there was not one in
the hall, and with little, meticulous touches to her hat, her hair and
the white stock round her neck, she left the house.

She returned to a drawing-room occupied by Caroline and Sophia, yet
strangely silent. There was not a sound but what came from the birds
in the garden. Caroline's spectacles were on her nose and, though she
was not reading the letter on her knee, she had forgotten to take them
off, an ominous sign. Sophia's face was flushed with agitation, her
head drooped more than usual, but she lifted it with a sigh of relief
at Rose's entrance.