"Of course you couldn't. I know it's been awful for you, Auntie."
"I couldn't bear it, Anne, if I didn't believe that there is Something
Somewhere. I can't think how you get on without any religion."
"How do you know I haven't any?"
"Well, you've no faith in Anything. Have you, ducky?"
"I don't know what I've faith in. It's too difficult. If you love
people, that's enough, I think. It keeps you going through everything."
"No, it doesn't. It's all the other way about. It's loving people that
makes it all so hard. If you didn't love them you wouldn't care what
happened to them. If I didn't love Colin I could bear his shell-shock
better."
"If _I_ didn't love him, I couldn't bear it at all."
"I expect," said Adeline, "we both mean the same thing."
Anne thought of Adeline's locked door; and, in spite of her love for
her, she had a doubt. She wondered whether in this matter of loving they
had ever meant the same thing. With Adeline love was a passive state
that began and ended in emotion. With Anne love was power in action.
More than anything it meant doing things for the people that you loved.
Adeline loved her husband and her sons, but she had run away from the
sight of Robert's haemorrhage, she had tried to keep back Eliot and
Jerrold from the life they wanted, she locked her door at night and shut
Colin out. To Anne that was the worst thing Adeline had done yet. She
tried not to think of that locked door.
"I suppose," said Adeline, "you'll leave me now your father's coming
home?"
John Severn's letter lay between them on the table. He was retiring
after twenty-five years of India. He would be home as soon as his
letter.
"I shall do nothing of the sort," said Anne. "I shall stay as long as
you want me. If father wants me he must come down here."
In another three days he had come.
Again he sat out with her on the terrace when the October days were
warm; he walked with her up and down the lawn and on the flagged paths
of the flower garden. Again he followed her from the drawing-room to the
library where Colin was, and back again. He waited, ready for her.
Again Adeline smiled her self-satisfied, self-conscious smile. She had
the look of a young girl, moving in perfect happiness. She was
perpetually aware of him.
One night Colin called out to Anne that he couldn't sleep. People were
walking about outside under his window. Anne looked out. In the full
moonlight she saw Adeline and her father walking together on the
terrace. Adeline was wrapped in a long cloak; she held his arm and they
leaned toward each other as they walked. His man's voice sounded tender
and low.