e
crest set in too rarefied an air for her to breathe with comfort. Poise
had been slipping from her, and she was genuinely distressed. In the
first stage of her declension she was chiefly occupied with a frantic
snatching at her passion--a sustained effort to pull it back and keep it
with her; in the second she was occupied in wondering how best to get
gracefully out of the entanglement, which was how she grew to envisage
it. At first this seemed to be hardly possible; she saw pathetic
pictures of herself going on with it and sacrificing herself, unaware
how the pleasure of the moment was leading her on, how charming she
found Ishmael's considerate and tender love-making that came to her
jaded nerves with the refreshing quality of a draught of pure water to a
man who has lived too long on champagne. The actual present continued to
be pleasurable long after she had determined that it could never
crystallise into anything more definite, and so she went on from day to
day, enjoying herself, yet vaguely hoping something would happen which
would enable her to retire from the engagement without loss of
self-respect or that of Ishmael.

For gradually she became quite sure that she could not go through with
it, that she must get right away. The people she wanted to know had not
called on her--the Parson, on whose help she had relied, held out no
assistance; Annie was stubborn and would obviously, wherever she was, do
her best to make of herself a barrier against the world, the world that
Blanche must know if life were to be tolerable here. The climax, to
Blanche's mind, had been a ball just given by a local magnate and his
wife who lived on the outskirts of Penzance. Ishmael had been invited
and she with him, under the chaperonage of an elderly cousin of the
Parson's who was staying at the Vicarage. And the ball, from Blanche's
point of view, had been a failure. She had been received politely, but
without enthusiasm; and she had overheard some of the other guests
saying that they supposed young Ruan had had to be invited, but that it
was really dashed awkward!... And she was beginning to realise that
Ishmael, when he had paid his mother a little income, paid Vassie enough
to live on, paid John-James bigger wages to allow of his living
elsewhere, would not be nearly as well off as she had thought ... a
visit to London once a year would be the utmost to be hoped for. And for
the rest--year in, year out, at Cloom, watching the wa