mmon sense rebelled. A kiss!
what was it after all? A Christmas forfeit, a prank of which
even Val Stafford could have said no worse than that it was
beneath the dignity of his six and thirty years: only too
flattering for such a little country girl, sunburnt, simple, and
occasionally tongue-tied. The lady of the ivory frame (whom
Lawrence had fished out of her seclusion and set up on his
dressing table, to the disgust of Caroline: who was a Baptist,
and didn't care to dust a person who wore so few clothes), the
lady of the ivory frame was far handsomer than Isabel, or at
least handsome in a far more finished style.

Lawrence had the curiosity to get out of bed and carry Mrs. Cleve
to the window. Yes, she certainly was an expensive luxury, this
smiling lady, her eyes large and liquid, her waved hair rippling
under its diamond aigrette, her rather wide, eighteenth century
shoulders dimpling down under a collar of diamonds to the half
bare swell of her breast: and for an amateur of her type she was
charming, with her tired, sophisticated glance and her fresh
mouth, like a rouged child: but it was borne in on Lawrence that
she was not for him. He had kissed her two or three times, as
occasion served and she seemed to desire it, but he had never
lain awake afterwards, nor had his heart beaten any faster, no,
not even in the summerhouse at Bingley when she was fairly in his
arms. He pitched the photograph into a drawer. Frederick Cleve
was safe, for him.

Strolling out on the balcony, Lawrence folded his arms on the
balustrade. The night was hot: perhaps that was why he could not
sleep. By his watch it was ten minutes past two. The moon was
near her setting. She lay on her back with tumbled clouds all
round her: mother & pearl clouds, quilted, and tinged with a
sheen of opal. He wondered whether Bernard was asleep: poor
Bernard, lying alone through the dreary hours. Perhaps it was
because Lawrence was not at all like a curate that Bernard had
already made his cousin free of certain dark corners which Val
had never been allowed to explore. "My wife? She's not my
wife," Clowes had said, staring up at Lawrence with his wide
black eyes. "She's my nurse." And he went on defining the
situation with the large coarse frankness which he permitted
himself since his accident, and which did not repel Lawrence, as
it would have repelled Val or Jack Bendish, because Lawrence
habitually used the same frankness in