Looking back on her intimacy with Marriott, she realized now that what she would miss most was the good fellowship there had been between them. With him, though without realizing it at the time, she had found expression easy, her thoughts had been clear, she could find words for them which he could understand and appreciate. Whenever she came across anything in a book or in a poem or in a situation there was always the satisfying sense that she could share it with Marriott; he would apprehend instantly. There was no one else who could do this; with her mother, with her father, with Dick, no such thing was possible; with them she spoke a different language, lived in another world. And so it was with her friends; she moved as an alien being in the conventional circle of that existence to which she had been born. One by one, her friends had ceased to be friends, they had begun to shrink away, not consciously, perhaps, but certainly, into the limbo of mere acquaintance. She thought of all this as she rode home that night, and after she had got home; and when it all seemed clear, she shrank from the clarity; she would not, after all, have it too clear; she must not push to any conclusion all these thoughts about Gordon Marriott. She chose to decide that he had been stupid, and his stupidity offended her; it was not pleasant to have him sneer at a man who had just told her he loved her, no matter who the man was, and she felt, with an inconsistency that she clung to out of a sense of self-preservation, that Marriott should have known this; he might have let her enjoy her triumph for a little, and then--but this was dangerous; was he to conclude that she loved him? What was it, she wondered, that made her weak and impotent in the presence of Eades? She did not like to own a fear of him, yet she felt a fear; would she some day succumb? The fear crept on her and distressed her; she knew very well that he would pursue her, never waver or give up or lose sight of his purpose. In some way he typified for her all that was fixed, impersonal, irrefragable--society on its solid rocks. He had no doubts about anything, his opinions were all made, tested, tried and proved. Any uncertainty, any fluidity, any inconsistency was impossible. And she felt more and more inadequate herself; she felt that she had nothing to oppose to all this. BOOK III I