‘Yes, I think you hate her; but be careful, Anna, for hatred breeds hatred, and remember I stand for the rights of my child—if you hate her you’ve got to hate me; she’s my child. I won’t let her face your hatred alone.’ Ugly, degrading, rather terrible half-truths. Their hearts ached while their lips formed recriminations. Their hearts burst into tears while their eyes remained dry and accusing, staring in hostility and anger. Far into the night they accused each other, they who before had never seriously quarrelled; and something very like the hatred he spoke of leapt out like a flame that seared them at moments. ‘Stephen, my own child—she’s come between us.’ ‘It’s you who have thrust her between us, Anna.’ Mad, it was madness! They were such faithful lovers, and their love it was that had fashioned their child. They knew it was madness and yet they persisted, while their anger dug out for itself a deep channel, so that future angers might more easily follow. They could not forgive and they could not sleep, for neither could sleep without the other’s forgiveness, and the hatred that leapt out at moments between them would be drowned in the tears that their hearts were shedding. 3 Like some vile and prolific thing, this first quarrel bred others, and the peace of Morton was shattered. The house seemed to mourn, and withdraw into itself, so that Stephen went searching for its spirit in vain. ‘Morton,’ she whispered, ‘where are you, Morton? I must find you, I need you so badly.’ For now Stephen knew the cause of their quarrels, and she recognized the form of the shadow that had seemed to creep in between them at Christmas, and knowing, she stretched out her arms to Morton for comfort: ‘My Morton, where are you? I need you.’ Grim and exceedingly angry grew Puddle, that little, grey box of a woman in her schoolroom; angry with Anna for her treatment of Stephen, but even more deeply angry with Sir Philip, who knew the whole truth, or so she suspected, and who yet kept that truth back from Anna. Stephen would sit with her head in her hands. ‘Oh, Puddle, it’s my fault; I’ve come in between them, and they’re all I’ve got—they’re my one perfect thing—I can’t bear it—why have I come in between them?’ And Puddle would flush with reminiscent anger as her mind slipped back and back over the years to old sorrows, old miseries, long decently buried but now disinterred by this pitiful Stephen. She would live through those years again, while her spirit would cry out, unregenerate, against their injustice.