It was hardly possible for her to say the truth to him, for the truth would have run something like this: – “Because you have a fitful, incomprehensible attraction for me, and because I trust you more than anyone I know, also because I wanted to feel I had power over you, I have used you shamefully. I have made you tell me that you loved me, not only to make sure of that, but to force the hand of the man I am myself in love with. On the whole I have succeeded, and now, though I am surprised at myself and perhaps ashamed, I am not repentant. All I wish is never to see you again. Your pain might trouble me, and I want to be free from remorse and reproach to follow my desire. If you will keep out of my way I shall try to feel friendly towards you.”

This, however, though not the letter Joanna wrote, was not so very unlike the letter that Lawrence was to read at the other end. Throughout all the trite, laborious phrases put down upon the paper the reality made itself felt clearly enough.

That same night Juley took to her bod with a bad gastric attack which had been threatening her for some time, and the doctor was sent for. It was not immediately serious, he said when he had questioned her, but she must have special care if it was not to become so. Above all, for the next few weeks she should have absolute rest.

But while the doctor was speaking, there spread over Juley’s face a crafty and obstinate expression well known to her children. As soon as he was gone she declared that she felt better and that it was a pity he had been sent for at all. And next morning, do what they would, she got up. She could rest, she said, “after the Flitting,” which on account of incoming tenants to Collessie Street, could not well be put off to a later date. Meanwhile it was urgent that she should set to, and start clearing those many “places” of hers which were choked with the accumulations of nearly thirty years.

This clearing business was an obsession and a shame to Juley, and a matter in which she was fiercely secretive. And sacred above all from the prying eyes of her children and servants did she hold the famous middle part of her huge bedroom wardrobe with its many shelves and drawers. When the children were small they had regarded as a treat of treats that they should be in the room on the rare occasion of a clearing of this receptacle by their mother. It was always kept locked and the key in Juley’s key-basket. Even when Joanna became a woman she had felt it something of an honour to be handed the key and asked to fetch something out of the front part. And now, by the doctor’s explicit orders, the entire wardrobe with all the other places to be cleared, was delivered into her hands.