“It is so difficult,” she pursued helplessly, and saw him wonder why she went on with the subject and try to read the title of her book. She did not mean to tell him that. That would lead them away; just nowhere. If only she could tell him everything and get him to understand. But that would mean admitting that she was letting the children’s education slide; and he was sitting there, confidently, so beautifully dressed for dinner, paying her forty pounds a year not to let the children’s education slide.... “It’s an opportunity; he’s come in here, and sat down to talk to me. I ought to tell him; I’m cheating.” But he had looked for the title of her book, and would have talked, about anything, if she could have talked. He had a little air of deference, quiet kind indulgent deference. His neat little shoulders, bent as he sat turned towards her, were kind. “I’m too young,” she cried in her mind. If only she could say aloud, “I’m too young--I can’t do it,” and leave everything to him. Or leave the children out altogether and talk to him, man to man, about the book. She could not do that. Everything she said would hurt her, poisoned by the hidden sore of her incapability to do anything for his children. He ought to send them to school. But they would not go to a school where anything real was taught. Science, strange things about India and Ireland, the æsthetic movement, Ruskin; making things beautiful. How far away all that seemed, that sacred life of her old school--forgotten. The thought of it was like a breath in the room. Did he know of these things? That sort of school would take the children away, out of this kind of society life. Make them think--for themselves. He did not think or approve of thought. Even the hard Banbury Park people would be nearer to him than any of those things.... That was the world. Nearly everyone seemed to be in it. He was whimsically trying to read the title of her book with the little half-smile he shared with the boy. People came in and they both rose. It was over. She sank back miserably into the offering of the moment, retiring into a lamp-lit corner with her book, enclosing herself in its promise. 10