“Talking won’t get us anywhere anyway.”

No, Christina thought. But listening might.

“What do you want, Ellen?”

“To be left alone with Nick. We understand each other.”

“Very well,” and Christina got up to go. Somehow things had got out of hand. Let out a little bitterness and the whole ocean of it bottled up in Ellen began to pour out.

“You can’t have to fight as hard as I’ve fought to be full of sweetness and light. I’m sorry, Christy.”

“Oh, good heavens, Ellen, don’t apologize. We’re friends!” This time the impulse to put an arm round the fierce little person at bay before her won over caution. The end was wordless. It was the two women held close in spite of themselves. Nothing had been solved, but they were friends.

Ellen watched at the window as Christina started the car. She didn’t wave. But she felt like doing it. And then she thought, it’s easy for Christina to be generous. It’s hard for me. She felt all beaten up inside with not yielding.

CHRISTINA’S JOURNAL—November 23

I guess there will always be a rift in the lute, but I’m glad I went. The thing is that Ellen thrives on struggle and lives on pride. Every now and then she has to have a reason to get angry. She gets all fiery and up in the air, and maybe it’s good for her. Feeling of some sort keeps the machine functioning. But what dangerous stuff it is, even at our age—especially at our age, I think I mean. In some ways we grow more vulnerable as we get old. It all costs more—anger, passionate love. People imagine that the old no longer feel intensely. What rot! It seems to me I feel everything more, or that the range of what can make me feel grows all the time rather than diminishing. The young are so self-reliant. They go rushing about colliding with reality at every turn. Minor explosions take place. They think no one has ever felt what they feel. The trouble is that when one is old, one recognizes the same old feelings taking over. One is too aware of the dangers, the exhaustion, the cost of tension—and one is pulled this way and that, as I have been lately between Cornelius and Ellen, trying to see both sides.

I wonder whether she will get Nick to a doctor. She is more frightened than she admits by this capacity for violence in him. No one knows better than she what a dangerous man Rufus became before he died. Nick is not like that, but he appears to be developing a kind of obsession about wild animals. Jane will help. Jane will know what to say.