She did not look at the girl as she said it—that she could not do, perhaps out of something that, for her, was the nearest she would ever come to pity. There ensued a long, almost breathless silence, while Angela waited with her eyes turned away. A leaf dropped, and she heard its minute, soft falling, heard the creak of the branch that had let fall its leaf as a breeze passed over the garden. Then the silence was broken by a quiet, dull voice, that sounded to her like the voice of a stranger: ‘No—’ it said very slowly, ‘no—I couldn’t marry you, Angela.’ And when Angela at last gained the courage to look up, she found that she was sitting there alone. CHAPTER 20 1 For three weeks they kept away from each other, neither writing nor making any effort to meet. Angela’s prudence forbade her to write: ‘Litera scripta manet’—a good motto, and one to which it was wise to adhere when dealing with a firebrand like Stephen. Stephen had given her a pretty bad scare, she realized the necessity for caution; still, thinking over that incredible scene, she found the memory rather exciting. Deprived of her anodyne against boredom, she looked upon Ralph with unfriendly eyes; while he, poor, inadequate, irritable devil, with his vague suspicions and his chronic dyspepsia, did little enough to divert his wife—his days, and a fairly large part of his nights as well, were now spent in nagging. He nagged about Tony who, as ill luck would have it, had decided that the garden was rampant with moles: ‘If you can’t keep that bloody dog in order, he goes. I won’t have him digging craters round my roses!’ Then would come a long list of Tony’s misdeeds from the time he had left the litter. He nagged about the large population of green-fly, deploring the existence of their sexual organs: ‘Nature’s a fool! Fancy procreation being extended to that sort of vermin!’ And then he would grow somewhat coarse as he dwelt on the frequent conjugal excesses of green-fly. But most of all he nagged about Stephen, because this as he knew, irritated his wife: ‘How’s your freak getting on? I haven’t seen her just lately; have you quarrelled or what? Damned good thing if you have. She’s appalling; never saw such a girl in my life; comes swaggering round here with her legs in breeches. Why can’t she ride like an ordinary woman? Good Lord, it’s enough to make any man see red; that sort of thing wants putting down at birth, I’d like to institute state lethal chambers!’