"What's the matter? Is she ill?" she said.

"No, I don't think so. She won't tell me. She's horribly upset about something."

"Shall I go to her?"

"No; better not, Winny. Look here, she won't come to Richmond. She says we're to go without her."

"We can't, Ranny."

"I don't know. Upon my word, I think we may as well. She'll be more upset if we don't go. She says she wants to be left to herself for _one_ day."

A sort of tremor pa.s.sed over her eyes. They did not look at him; they looked beyond him, as if somewhere they saw something that frightened her.

"You mustn't leave her, Ranny," she said.

He laughed. "She doesn't want me. She's just told me so."

"Whether she wants you or not you've got to stay with her."

She said it sternly.

"I say, you needn't talk like that. To hear you any one would think I fair neglected her."

She bit her lip. Her eyes wandered in their troubled way. She looked like a thing held there under his eyes against its will and seeking some way of escape.

"I don't think you neglect her, Ranny," she said at last.

"Well, then, what _do_ you think?"

She turned. "I think I'm going for a little spin somewhere by myself. I shall come back in time for dinner. Then I shall go down to Wandsworth and fetch Baby."

"I'll do that."

"No, you won't. You'll stay with Violet," she said.

"And what about your holiday?"

"My holiday's all right. Don't you worry."

She was out of the house and in the garden. Mechanically he wheeled her bicycle out into the road. He was utterly submissive to her will.

She mounted, and he ran by her side; she pressed on her pedals, compelling him to run fast and faster; she set her mouth hard, grinning, and forced the pace, and he ran at the top of his speed and laughed. At the end of the Avenue she turned, waved to him gaily and was gone.

Upstairs on her bed, in the room of the love knots, Violet lay and writhed. She lay on her face. She had wetted her pillow with her tears; she had flung it aside and was digging her hands into Ransome's pillow with a tearing, disemboweling motion. Every now and then, with the regularity of a machine, she gave out a sob and a groan that shook her.

He found her so.

She turned on her side as he entered, and showed him her face scarlet and swollen with crying.

"What have you come for?" she said. "I _told_ you to go."

"I haven't gone. I'm not going."

"But you've got to go. You shall go. D'you hear? I won't have you hanging about, watching and tormenting me. What are you afraid of? What d'you think I'm going to do?"

She turned and raised herself on her elbow and stared about her as if at a host of enemies surrounding her, then she sank back helpless.

"Won't you tell me what it is, Vi?" he said, tenderly.

He sat beside her, leaning over into her hot lair, and made as though he would have put his hand on her shoulder. She writhed from him.

"Why can't you let me be," she cried, "when I don't want you? I don't want you, I tell you, and I wish you'd go away. You've done enough harm as it is."

He rose and went to the foot of the bed and stood there, regarding her somberly.

"What did you mean by that? What harm have I done you?"

She had flung herself down again.

"You _know_--you _know_," she moaned into the pillow.

"My G.o.d, I wish I did!"

Then he remembered.

"Unless--you mean--"

"You ought to know what I mean without my telling you."

"Well, if I do, you needn't cast it up to me. I married you right enough, Vi."

"Yes, that's what you did. And that's why I hate you."

"It seems to me a queer reason. But, come to that, what else could we do?"

She sat up, pulling herself together like a woman who had things to say and meant to say them now.

"We could have done as I wanted. We could have gone on as we were."

"That's what you wanted, was it?"

"You know it was. I never asked you to marry me. I asked you not to. And you _would_--you _would_. I didn't _want_ to marry you."

"And why didn't you want? That's what I'd like to get at?"

"Because I knew what it would be."

"Has it been so very bad then?"