it herself and the reluctantly creeping brightness
made the day feel the drearier; it took a long time even to warm her
foot as she stood before it, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece.

It was Saturday; she should not see her girls today; there was relief in
that, for she did not think that she could have found anything to say to
them this morning.

Looking at the roses again, she felt vexed with the maid for having left
them there in their melancholy. She rang and spoke to her almost sharply
telling her to take them away, and when she had gone felt the tears rise
with surprise and compunction for the sharpness.

There would be no fresh flowers in the room today, it was raining too
hard. If Augustine had been here he would have gone out and found her
some wet branches of beech or sycamore to put in the vases: he knew how
she disliked a flowerless, leafless room, a dislike he shared.

How the rain beat down. She stood looking out of the window at the
sodden earth, the blotted shapes of the trees. Beyond the nearest
meadows it was like a grey sheet drawn down, confusing earth and sky and
shutting vision into an islet.

She hoped that Augustine had taken his mackintosh. He was very forgetful
about such things. She went out to look into the bleak, stone hall hung
with old hunting prints that were dimmed and spotted with age and damp.
Yes, it was gone from its place, and his ulster, too. It had been a
considered, not a hasty departure. A tweed cloak that he often wore on
their walks hung there still and, vaguely, as though she sought
something, she turned it, looked at it, put her hands into the worn,
capacious pockets. All were empty except one where she found some
withered gorse flowers. Augustine was fond of stripping off the golden
blossoms as they passed a bush, of putting his nose into the handful of
fragrance, and then holding it out for her to smell it, too:--"Is it
apricots, or is it peaches?" she could hear him say.

She went back into the drawing-room holding the withered flowers. Their
fragrance was all gone, but she did not like to burn them. She held them
and bent her face to them as she stood again looking out. He would by
now have reached his destination. Wallace was an Eton friend, a nice
boy, who had sometimes stayed at Charlock House. He and Augustine were
perhaps already arguing about Nietzsche.

Strange that her numbed thoughts should creep along this path of custom,
of maternal associations and