But at length only phrases came to her, drifting like islands on a tide of sound – “The Father-Motherhood of God” – “The Central Sphere” – “The Divinity of Sex” – “The Man-Woman Creator.” Then single words began to spin like motes in the beams o the guttering candle – “Duality” – “Soul” – “Man” – “Dove” – “Love” – “Love” – “Love”. Then gradually she sank beyond the reach of words. And so she stayed, till drawn up by Aunt Perdy’s ice-cold hands upon her wrists she knew she was being told with contemptuous kindness that it was time for bed.

BOOK II

Open a door of utterance

COL iv 3

CHAPTER ONE

I

“To please me, to please your mother, Joanna – and it is not very often nowadays that I ask either you or Linnet to do anything to please me.”

It was Juley that spoke.

Joanna, tormented by the vexation and pertinacity in her mother’s voice, looked up from her drawing-board and across the dark parlour. She was sitting close up to the window eagerly using the last of the daylight for her work; but Juley stood uncertainly by the door, grasping the knob with one hand, while with the other she contrived awkwardly to hold a small tray loaded with tea things.

To the daughter by the window the mother’s face in the interior was only a pale blur; but she knew its expression as surely as though she could see the distressed features. And her blood rose in irritated protest.

She was working. She was trying to finish a lunette-shaped design for to-morrow’s class at the School of Art. Why couldn’t her mother let her alone? It was all very well coupling her name thus with Linnet’s. But in practice Linnet was left unmolested, and went his queer, separate way alone. And it had been the same with Sholto till he had left home a year ago. It seemed as if the boys were exempt from their mother’s spiritual passion. She even did her best to forward them in the world, scraping together the money for Sholto to start fair in the colonies when he should be ready to go, and keeping unpunctual Linnet up to the mark in his attendance at Mr. Boyd’s law office, where he was now apprenticed.

But what she considered the unspiritual ambitions of her daughters she had never ceased to mourn, and as Georgie was away, it was Joanna who chiefly suffered the strain of being yearned over.