Laura had wanted Justin to come with her to see the last of Coral. She knew that Coral would expect it: she was of the class that could be genuinely moved in public. But she knew also that Justin would shiver at the idea of Coral’s farewells. She wished he did not have to be considered: she wished he could laugh and say—“Oh, well, we must go through with it, I suppose,” and provide himself with chocolates and roses, and endure a farewell from his sister-in-law that might or might not culminate in an embrace. She wished he would be vulgar and human and uncritical for once. She wished——

Of course he would come if she asked him.... It would be a nuisance, naturally, with the dinner-party in the evening, but they could go up by one train and come back by the next, or start earlier and have their lunch in town.... If she suggested lunch he would surely come.... A man hates to be hurried, but with due time allowed for the importances of life he would come?... He ought to come. After Coral’s message he ought to come.... She would go up again to the Priory that very afternoon to ask him....

She did. She went up to the Priory on Thursday, and again on Friday for that express purpose, but she found when she tried that she was not able to ask him. She could not get out the words. She was afraid of his acquiescence, of his bored, impatient acquiescence that was worse than a refusal. She was afraid—it gave her a shock to realize that she was actually afraid of Justin.

She took the discovery up to town with her that Saturday, setting it to the monody of the train.

“Afraid of Justin? Afraid of Justin?”

“Absurd! Absurd! Afraid of Justin?”

Coral, explicitly, and almost before they were in speaking distance, explanatively out of mourning, did not soothe her. Coral must needs interrupt embraces, and introductions to the company, and asides to porters, and high-pitched laughter, and a rattle of news, to say—

“You’re no relation! Where’s my dear brother-in-law?”

“He was awfully sorry. He was kept at the last moment—quite unexpectedly. He sent all sorts of messages,” said Laura successfully. Then, because she was an amateur, she added the touch too much: “He was sure you’d understand.”

Coral was appreciative.

“What a liar you are! You weren’t a week ago! What’s been happening?” Then, with a scream of delight. “Don’t say—oh, my dear, don’t say you’ve had a row with him!” She tucked her arm into Laura’s and trotted her off down the platform. “Come on—come to my compartment (to myself, of course—leading lady) and tell me all about it.”

Laura, in her fright, was cruel—

“And Timothy sent messages too. Such a lot. He did so want to come.”

“You might have brought him.” Coral stared in front of her.

“But you said—you said—” began Laura, distressed. But the clang of trundled milk-cans drowned the answer. When they could hear themselves again Coral had found her compartment, and, settling herself and Laura in it, was giving her the private and professional history of every member of the company at once till the carriage doors began to slam and Laura had to jump out in a hurry.

Coral leant out of the window.

“Good-bye! You were a brick to come. Give my love to Grannie. I’ll write from Gib, tell her. And tell Justin I quite understand.”

“What?”

Coral laughed.

“Oh, the message he didn’t send, and—” she raised her voice as the train began to creak—“and the letter he didn’t write, for that matter.”

Laura ran along, level with the moving window, scarlet, voluble.

“No, no! I wanted to tell you. I forgot, talking. It was a mistake. I ought to have reminded him. He couldn’t help it. It was the eggs—the new cases—it put it all out of his head. He was awfully sorry.” She quickened her pace, panting, as the train drew away from her. But Coral’s was a carrying voice.

“Take my tip, Laura—smash up his old eggs! Then you’ll have some peace! Good-bye! Kiss Timmy! Good-bye! Good-bye!”

The train roared out of the station.

Laura, as she muddled her way back to her own platform and settled herself for the slow return journey, had a half smile for Coral and her characteristic farewell. She must tell Justin ... or better not?... He was not likely to stand a joke about his collection.... He wouldn’t see anything funny.... And yet there was something comical in a grown man being so absorbed.... If he could only realize that ... join in the joke against himself.... People would laugh with him then ... but as it was—she winced—people who didn’t understand laughed at him. He made himself ridiculous....

She wriggled her shoulders uneasily.

“Of course,” she began, talking aloud to herself in her usual fashion, “of course it’s only idiots like Coral and silly little Brackenhurst—and Gran’papa’s always down on every one anyway—but they do laugh. I wonder—I suppose I couldn’t tell Justin?” And then bitterly—“As if he’d listen! I don’t count. Nothing counts with Justin except the collection. Queer how men get wrapped up in a toy! If I told him what they said—not that one cares a dandelion for what they say—but if I told him——They’re always saying ‘Why doesn’t he get a job?’ Pure envy, of course. But he’d only shrug his shoulders. ‘They say. Let them say!’ Justin doesn’t care a bit about people. Half the time he doesn’t know they’re there. And he walks on all their corns—bless him! No wonder they get annoyed. Because it is pure jealousy. Why shouldn’t he play? He’s got plenty of money. Besides,” she laughed aloud tenderly as she sat all by herself in the empty carriage and thought of him, “it’s so lovable. It’s like a child. He’s awfully like Timothy——”

“Only a child,” she was frowning again, “a child grows out of its toys. But a man—what’s one to do with a man? A man’s so horribly careful of his toys. What’s one to do? One can’t sit still and let him be laughed at. What’s one to do with Justin?”

The Brackenhurst hills shrugged their tapestried shoulders as she stared at them through the jolting windows, saying to her—

“Heaven knows! We bore him and bred him, but—what is one to do?”

“One must do something, you know,” she found herself arguing, “because he’s not selfish. He’s only self-absorbed. He only wants waking up.”

“Wake him up!” clanked the train, like a live thing. “Wake him up—wake him up.”

She turned fretfully in her seat.

“How can one? What can one do with Justin? How can one get at him? He’s never been unhappy, or poor, or ill. He doesn’t know what anything means. What’s the use of being angry with him about Coral? Besides—they’re all such little things. He’s never done anything really wrong in his life.” And then, “I only wish he had. One could talk to him, tackle him then. But if I did talk to him, what could I say? It’s such little things. He’s like the man with one talent. I always did think that man was in the right really: Lo, thou hast thine own! Justin’s perfectly justified. It’s I who am the fool. Why can’t I leave him alone?”

She put her hand to her aching head.

“I believe—I believe I think too much about Justin. I wish I could stop thinking——”

But she could not. She was, for the first time in her life, in that mood which many women and all artists know, when the accumulated, unconscious thinking of many weeks, of many years sometimes, surges up and overflows the surface consciousness. It is in that naked hour that things—murders—masterpieces—happen. Those who know assert that it is not an experience to encourage and that when it is over you are collapsed, hysterical, and sleepless with fatigue.

But Laura, who did not in the least understand what was happening to her, knew only with a vague discomfort that the world, the outer world, the harmonious web of sounds and shapes and colours that is the background of conscious life, had fallen apart, inexplicably and amazingly, into individual, unrelated facts. The buttons of the dusty railway cushions became important, importunate: the steeple on the sky-line, the pony’s swivel ear, were each and equally a nucleus upon which her thoughts settled like swarming bees, from which they lifted again in ominous, buzzing clouds; while the trivial sounds about her, the window straps padding against the doors, the rub-a-dub of hoofs, the unlatched gate clicketing in the wind, the hum of the twins’ voices in the next room, the very sigh and fall of her own breast, shaped themselves as the swing of the train had shaped itself, into words, into a whispering refrain of five words—

“Wake him up! Wake him up! Afraid? Absurd!”

“Wake him up! Wake him up! Afraid? Absurd!”

Underneath her gossip and laughter with the boys, and her altercation with Aunt Adela as to when the trap should be ready and her necessary appreciation of Gran’papa’s concomitant and rounded jest—underneath the hurry of the dressing hour and her own delicious difficulties with hair and frock, she was nevertheless aware of that refrain. In spite of herself she listened, marked time to it, fled from it into the inmost recesses of her mind, and still listened to it as a sick woman listens to a fly roaming the room, or to a barrel-organ, devil-driven, in the street below.

It left her at last. It left her when she reached the Priory and found Justin glad to see her. It left her then and she forgot it at once and as utterly as if it had never been. But as she sat at table enjoying herself, enjoying the lights and the excitement, and the feel of her new dress, and the looks of the folk she loved, she felt suddenly very tired. She supposed that she wanted her dinner. She hadn’t done anything special that day.... It was ridiculous to be so tired ... so dead tired....