They had all three been disturbed during the Desmonds’ visit. This intrusion of strangers had torn open feelings which had perhaps been emerging but not recognized. Violet felt it quite absurd to have allowed what Sally said about the house to hurt her so much, but she had allowed it and now she watched her niece warily, this niece who had the power to make tears start in her eyes (Violet never cried, or almost never) just because she was not happy here. Sally was sitting on the arm of a chair swinging her foot and frowning. She would have liked to apologize for what she had said, but something in her withstood this capitulation—Ian, perhaps. She kept forcibly placing Ian between her aunt and herself, as a protection against the waves of emotion. Whatever is happening to me? Sally thought and suddenly got up and walked out of the room, without a word.

“Where are you off to, Sally? I was just going to mix a cocktail…” There was distress in Charles’s voice and Violet caught it at once. She sensed in herself, in Sally, now in Charles a precipitation of the atmosphere and wished to ward it off.

“Let her go,” she said quietly. “You’ll make her feel like a prisoner. She did her duty very valiantly by the Desmonds, but she has to escape, you know, she’s so afraid of being caught,” and Violet laughed a gentle slightly superior laugh.

“Well, then”—Charles turned away—“I suppose we might as well dress before we have a drink.”

Just then it thundered, and exactly as if someone had opened a sluice in the sky, a great sheet of rain poured down.

On their way upstairs Violet and Charles stopped on the landing. It was quite dark.

“Wherever did the storm come from?” Charles asked. “It was perfectly serene an hour ago.” This change without warning was upsetting, unsettling. It made him feel as if he didn’t know where he was.

Violet shivered. “It would be too bad if we were in for a spell of rain.”

“Nonsense. It’s a just a thunderstorm.” He turned up the stairs, but Violet sat down a minute on the window seat and peered out. The mountains were completely hidden; sitting there neither downstairs nor upstairs, alone, she felt marooned, isolated, in a kind of panic. What if Charles—Violet pushed away the dream-image of Charles and Sally locked in each other’s arms in the meadow, and fled.

But Sally was not thinking of Charles. She was walking up and down in her room (Violet sitting at her dressing table heard the footsteps, back and forth, back and forth and dropped the stopper of a perfume bottle). Sally was wondering how she would ever face Violet again, how she could possibly bring herself to go down to dinner at all. She had taken out her best sweater, black cashmere embroidered with pearls and silver thread. She tried buttoning it up to her throat over the yellow dress and then she tried it open, all the time seeing herself through Violet’s eyes, then as she suddenly admitted this to herself, she tore the sweater off. That was when she began to walk up and down, hugging her arms, as if she were in pain. I cannot let this happen, she thought, it is too queer and upsetting. She took the photograph of Ian brusquely from the dresser and stared at it as if she were looking at a stranger. For months the whole world of sensation had been bound up in his face; everything she saw which moved her at all was related to his image, so she had only to murmur his name to feel his touch on her arm. Here in this place which she had regarded as a prison, he was her freedom, her escape, her identity and—she saw now—her safety too. And what was happening that she could hold his picture in her hands, and feel nothing? If only we’d been lovers, she thought, I’d be all right. I’d be safe. It was her fault that they hadn’t, that they had only reached a point of exaggerated devouring tenderness, meeting in public places, stealing each other’s caresses as if they were criminals, in taxis, or in Central Park early in the morning, when the sky was suddenly bright green, just before sunrise. Sally was waiting for a final gift on his part, and he had not made it. He had not asked her to marry him. He had talked of it as something possible in the distant future—Oh Ian, why? she whispered. But all she felt was what it had been like to walk through the empty drawing room in the sunlight with Violet’s arm through hers, the perfect pure intense bliss it had been. She could see the images of her life with Ian—Central Park—but she could not feel them any more. It was as if they lay behind a pane of glass, and only what was here now touched her skin like sunlight or rain.

But I do love him, she told herself grimly. He’s all I have. Against everyone, against everything, he’s what I am, even if it’s wrong, a waste, nothing those Desmond girls could ever understand. She could not see why the idea of the Desmond girls came to her. Whatever did it matter what they thought? Or their father, or Uncle Charles, old-fashioned, simple, romantic people, all of them.

Was she in some way set apart then from all that was normal, good, simple, possible? For all she wanted was to bury herself in Violet, to shut out the whole world, and to be enclosed accepted once and for all, to love and to be passionately loved by Violet. This fact was so overwhelming that she sat down on her bed, quite unable to go down and to face the reality. She just waited until Charles’s loud clanging on the gong forced her to face them again.

“We’re celebrating,” Charles said. He seemed rather excited.

“What?” Sally asked bluntly. She was grateful to Charles for being there, now that she couldn’t lift her eyes to Violet’s face, now that she was so utterly constricted and frozen by the strength of her feelings.

“The relief it is to be together again, the relief that the invaders have come and gone, examined us, given us an A for conduct, approved, eaten a huge tea and left us to ourselves…” Charles was laughing. Sally had never seen him like this, so gay and excited. “Here’s your drink,” he said, touching her hair lightly as he gave it to her. “We’ve had one. You did take a long time to put on a sweater. You didn’t knit it, did you? You didn’t sew on all those little pearls between tea and dinner?”

Sally laughed in spite of herself. One couldn’t resist Charles in such a mood and the last thing she wanted was to resist him. Anything which would stop for a moment the awfully deep thump of her heart, the insistent stifled beat as if it wanted to leap out of her chest, anything was a relief. She threw herself into his mood and soon they were laughing as they had never laughed before, daring each other to further nonsense. Violet withdrew from their game and watched it, and watched the rain pouring down outside.

Only when they had gone in to dinner did Sally finally dare to look at Violet, sitting so remote and composed across the table, framed in the candles. She caught that considering, judging, unsmiling glance and in a second all her excitement fell. It was the same look which had thrown her as she was crossing the brook, the look of an antagonist, but Sally did not recognize it as that. She thought it was because of what she had said about the house. She felt the blush creeping up her neck and quickly, quickly to hide it, blurted out what she had been holding inside her all the evening,

“Forgive me, Aunt Violet,” she said, her fingers crumbling the bread beside her plate.

“Whatever for, Sally dear?” For Violet was utterly at sea.

“Well,” Sally stammered, “I mean—about—what I said about the house. It’s just…” but she couldn’t go on. It would take a year to explain all she meant.

“You don’t need to explain,” Violet said kindly and turned to Charles to ask him to ring for Maire.

“What’s all this?” Charles asked, sensing the tension.

“Nothing, darling.” And then with unconscious cruelty she turned back to Sally, “What do you hear from Ian these days?”

As Sally talked about Ian, about his plans, a summer play which had fallen through, she felt as if she were building a house of cards, so unreal did it all sound even to her. “He doesn’t write very good letters,” she ended, “that’s what’s so awful. None of the real things can be said it seems to me,” but Sally was not thinking of Ian now. “I hate words. They’re barriers. They never tell the truth.”

It was said with a kind of violence. Sally felt herself that the tone was exaggerated. It was as if now she couldn’t do the simplest things naturally. And she wished Charles and Violet would leave her alone and play one of their own games, one of their teasing self-absorbed conversations which included her as the necessary audience, but asked nothing of her. As it was, she felt exposed by Charles’s attentions, by Violet’s silences. It seemed as if everything had subtly changed between them in the last few hours and Sally didn’t know how to cope with it. After dinner she made a lame excuse about a headache and went to bed.

Lying in bed, listening to the rain, she imagined them playing chess and pretending to be cross, enclosed in their love. Much later she heard footsteps on the stairs, a low laugh more secret than any words, and thought, “They’re going to bed.”