The House by the River

me from her grandmother's. In a week Margery was completely and delightedly "up," full of plans and longing to take up life exactly where she had left it. Stephen found her curiously eager for company

ry had at once determined that she would think nothing of it. She would do as the Whittakers did; not that she was p

he had wanted to work that evening, and because he fear

-isolation had tried him very severely. The sense of being an outcast from his fellows, suspected, despised, had grown unreasonably and was a perpetual irritant to the nerves. He had an achin

a decayed husband of about fifty with a drooping, ragged moustache, with watery eyes and the aspect of a wet rat, and an upright, aggressive, spiteful little wife, with an antique bonnet fixed very firmly on the extreme summit of her yellowish hair. She had thin lips, a harsh vo

nd had only been preserved from arrest by the strange eccentricities of the law. They did not want trouble made, but there it was: Emily had been a good daughter to them and had contribut

nny. They had gone away, muttering threats. John had no idea what they would do, but they filled him wi

was lying on the sofa, looking more fragile yet more delicious than he had ever seen her. She greeted him very

ut excellent wall-paper of dappled grey, and the pleasant rows of books on the white shelves, at the flowers in the Chinese bowl which Stephen had bought for her in some old shop, and the mass of roses on the shiny Sheraton table; then she looked out through the window at the red light of a tug sliding mysteriously down through the steely dark and back again at Stephen. And John knew that she was counting up her happiness; and he thought

n that book must have for those two some hidden and sinister meaning. It was bad enough, in any case, to stand there together behind Margery at the piano, and try to sing as they had sung in the old days, when nothing had happened. But these songs had some terrible innuendoes: "Blow, blow, thou winter wind," they sang first, and "Sigh no more, ladies." And when they came to "a friend's ingrati

uch dangerous ground. Even when Margery began to speak of the motor-boat, the men seemed to be stricken silly and dumb. Marg

d nothing, only a quick "Good night." He did not look at Stephen. They felt then like strangers to each other. And Ste

. hadn't I better ... I-I mean ... are

ness and partly to calculation-a half-conscious determina

bit trying, but I can stand it. I don't want to upset things any more now....

nd relief. And while he felt penitent and mean in the face of this magnanimity of John's, he

s table and pulled out the scribbled muddle of manuscript. But he wrote no word that night. He sat for a