"I declare if you're not as bad as your Aunt Charlotte."


IV.

Incredible; impossible; but it had happened.

And it was as if she had known it--all the time, known that she would
come downstairs that morning and see Maurice Jourdain's letter lying on
the table. She always had known that something, some wonderful,
beautiful, tremendous thing would happen to her. This was it.

It had been hidden in all her happiness. Her happiness was it. Maurice
Jourdain.

When she said "Maurice Jourdain" she could feel her voice throb in her
body like the string of a violin. When she thought of Maurice Jourdain
the stir renewed itself in a vague, exquisite vibration. The edges of her
mouth curled out with faint throbbing movements, suddenly sensitive, like
eyelids, like finger-tips.

Odd memories darted out at her. The plantation at Ilford. Jimmy's mouth
crushing her face. Jimmy's arms crushing her chest. A scarlet frock. The
white bridge-rail by the ford. Bertha Mitchison, saying things, things
you wouldn't think of if you could help it. But she was mainly aware of a
surpassing tenderness and a desire to immolate herself, in some
remarkable and noble fashion, for Maurice Jourdain. If only she could see
him, for ten minutes, five minutes, and tell him that she hadn't
forgotten him. He belonged to her real life. Her self had a secret place
where people couldn't get at it, where its real life went on. He was the