Bohemian life which was possible to people in their position, with the gaiety that she had taken the trouble to keep alive in her nature. London, even London, was not impossible. She felt sure that she could have managed to collect round her a set who would have been as infected with her supreme vitality and with her happiness, as were the people she had moved among before. Many of these, too, would have come quietly. She could have made without effort an amusing home, for her spring, her enjoyment of things, was not impaired. She could have climbed to another tree, and been at the top of that. Of course, it would have been annoying to know that she could not go to many houses where her presence before had been so much desired—the making of the evening. But plenty of those people such was the innate hypocrisy of the English—would have come quietly to her house. She would have gone quietly to theirs.
But now all that was over; she was left lonely and bitter. She had read Maud's letter, and though it was Maud all through, she had no use for it. It was just such a letter as Maud would have written if Charlie had decided otherwise. But he had not decided otherwise. Therefore a heel and a garden bed were sufficient for it.
So all this feverish employment to pass away the weeks till Charlie decided was over. There was nothing to be done, except to use up the time of the years. There were many of them. There was much time in each, and she was young and strong and healthy. Years ago she had grudged other people the time that they did not coin into enjoyment. Now she was on the other side. She, too, had time for which she had no use, and she would have sold it very cheap.
It was impossible to go into the garden, so fiercely did the heat reverberate from the baking walls. Aunt Cathie, as usual, had gone upstairs to rest after lunch; she would not appear till four. Then they would walk down to the kitchen-garden and see how the artichokes were doing. They might even find enough strawberries to make their dessert in the evening, but Aunt Cathie always said she would rather have none at all than not have a "dish" of them. Raspberries promised well also, for Lucia had sewed up the holes in the nets that defended them from the birds.
She went into the drawing-room, and sat there a little. It was not worth while reading; it was not worth while playing the
