of
womanhood making face against the world; but now that it was over, both
felt a little awkward. Would that kiss have been given if Fate had been
auspicious? Was it not proof of misery? So Mrs. Noel's smile seemed
saying, and Barbara's smile unwillingly admitted. Perceiving that if
they talked it could only be about the most ordinary things, they began
speaking of music, flowers, and the queerness of bees' legs. But all the
time, Barbara, though seemingly unconscious, was noting with her smiling
eyes, the tiny movement's, by which one woman can tell what is passing in
another. She saw a little quiver tighten the corner of the lips, the
eyes suddenly grow large and dark, the thin blouse desperately rise and
fall. And her fancy, quickened by last night's memory, saw this woman
giving herself up to the memory of love in her thoughts. At this sight
she felt a little of that impatience which the conquering feel for the
passive, and perhaps just a touch of jealousy.

Whatever Miltoun decided, that would this woman accept! Such
resignation, while it simplified things, offended the part of Barbara
which rebelled against all inaction, all dictation, even from her
favourite brother. She said suddenly:

"Are you going to do nothing? Aren't you going to try and free yourself?
If I were in your position, I would never rest till I'd made them free
me."

But Mrs. Noel did not answer; and sweeping her glance from that crown of
soft dark hair, down the soft white figure, to the very feet, Barbara
cried:

"I believe you are a fatalist."

Soon after that, not knowing what more to say, she went away. But
walking home across the fields, where full summer was swinging on the
delicious air and there was now no bull but only red cows to crop short
the 'milk-maids' and buttercups, she suffered from this strange
revelation of the strength of softness and passivity--as though she had
seen in the white figure of 'Anonyma,' and heard in her voice something
from beyond, symbolic, inconceivable, yet real.

CHAPTER XVIII

Lord Valleys, relieved from official pressure by subsidence of the war
scare, had returned for a long week-end. To say that he had been
intensely relieved by the news that Mrs. Noel was not free, would be to
put it mildly. Though not old-fashioned, like his mother-in-law, in
regard to the mixing of the castes, prepared to admit that exclusiveness
was out of date, to pass over with a shrug and a laugh tho