“No, mater. Not—as I ought to love him.”

Mrs. Ramsay’s heart cried, Poor Stephen, poor Stephen! but her lips said,

“You’ll learn, Elizabeth. Only—tell him.”

“Yes, mater. I—I must do that. He may not want me —when he knows. But I—I haven’t ever been fair to him—and I’ve realised at last—what I owe to him—and I’m—prepared to—to fulfill my—share of the—the contract. Thank you for—for helping me.”

“My dear, I haven’t done a thing,” Mrs. Ramsay said. “Ring the bell, and we’ll have tea. Then I shall have done something.”

“I—I ought not to stay. I only came to—”

“Darling, I shall burst into tears if you go. I’m feeling horribly lumpy, goodness knows why. Don’t cry, Elizabeth. It would be so awful if Mary came with the tea and found us melting on my new carpet. I should like you to kiss me, if you don’t mind.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Elizabeth spent nearly all one day trying to write to Stephen. Each successive letter seemed more impossible than the last, and was destroyed. She could not on paper tell him all that must be told; it was too bald, and her manner of writing too stiff. She longed for his facile pen, her own seemed halting and despicable. She could not in a letter offer to return to him; all that must be spoken. In the end she wrote only a short note, asking him to come and see her that they might discuss the future. Even that was unsatisfactory, but after some hesitation she dispatched it, feeling that she could do no better.

She was unprepared for his promptness in responding. She expected him to write, suggesting a day for their meeting, yet when she reflected, afterwards, she knew that his instant coming was more in keeping with his character. She sat at the window of her room on the following afternoon, and soon after three o’clock saw the familiar yellow car drive to the house and stop there.

She rose, breathless. Stephen switched off the engine in the way she knew so well, stepped from the cab and went quickly to the front door, with never a glance upward, to the window.

Elizabeth heard the vigorous peal of the bell somewhere in the basement, and of instinct flew to the mirror. Nervous hands patted her hair into soft curves over her ears; she turned, and stood as though on tiptoe, watching the door. A pulse throbbed in her throat, and her fingers twined themselves tensely together. She felt that of her own free will she had courted the worst ordeal of her life; panic threatened to overcome her; if escape had been possible she would have fled from the approaching interview. It was not possible. She had to brace herself to meet it, frightened, desperately embarrassed, and icily cold from head to foot.