“Well, my dear!” said Henrietta. “If I had such a worried look on my face, when I was going down to spend the weekend with the man I was engaged to — and going to be married to in a month — well! I should either try and change my face, or hide my feelings, or something.”

“You shut up!” said Hester curtly. “Don’t look at my face, if it doesn’t please you.”

“Now, my dear Hester, don’t go into one of your tempers! Just look in the mirror, and you’ll see what I mean.”

“Who cares what you mean! You’re not responsible for my face,” said Hester desperately, showing no intention of looking in the mirror, or of otherwise following her sister’s kind advice.

Henrietta, being the younger sister, and mercifully unengaged, hummed a tune lightly. She was only twenty-one, and had not the faintest intention of jeopardising her peace of mind by accepting any sort of fatal ring. Nevertheless, it WAS nice to see Hester “getting off”, as they say; for Hester was nearly twenty-five, which is serious.

The worst of it was, lately Hester had had her famous “worried” look on her face, when it was a question of the faithful Joe: dark shadows under the eyes, drawn lines down the cheeks. And when Hester looked like that, Henrietta couldn’t help feeling the most horrid jangled echo of worry and apprehension in her own heart, and she hated it. She simply couldn’t stand that sudden feeling of fear.

“What I mean to say,” she continued, “IS— that it’s jolly unfair to Joe, if you go down looking like that. Either put a better face on it, or —” But she checked herself. She was going to say “don’t go”. But really, she did hope that Hester would go through with this marriage. Such a weight off her, Henrietta’s, mind.

“Oh, hang!” cried Hester. “Shut up!” And her dark eyes flashed a spark of fury and misgiving at the young Henrietta.

Henrietta sat down on the bed, lifted her chin, and composed her face like a meditating angel. She really was intensely fond of Hester, and the worried look was such a terribly bad sign.

“Look here, Hester!” she said. “Shall I come down to Markbury with you? I don’t mind, if you’d like me to.”

“My dear girl,” cried Hester in desperation, “what earthly use do you think that would be?”

“Well, I thought it might take the edge off the intimacy, if that’s what worries you.”

Hester re-echoed with a hollow, mocking laugh.

“Don’t be such a CHILD, Henrietta, really!” she said.

And Hester set off alone, down to Wiltshire, where her Joe had just started a little farm, to get married on. After being in the artillery, he had got sick and tired of business: besides, Hester would never have gone into a little suburban villa. Every woman sees her home through a wedding ring. Hester had only taken a squint through her engagement ring, so far. But Ye Gods! not Golders Green, not even Harrow!

So Joe had built a little brown wooden bungalow — largely with his own hands: and at the back was a small stream with two willows, old ones. At the sides were brown sheds, and chicken-runs. There were pigs in a hog-proof wire fence, and two cows in a field, and a horse. Joe had thirty-odd acres, with only a youth to help him. But of course, there would be Hester.

It all looked very new and tidy. Joe was a worker. He too looked rather new and tidy, very healthy and pleased with himself. He didn’t even see the “worried look”. Or if he did, he only said:

“You’re looking a bit fagged, Hester. Going up to the City takes it out of you, more than you know. You’ll be another girl down here.”

“Shan’t I just!” cried Hester.

She did like it, too! — the lots of white and yellow hens, and the pigs so full of pep! And the yellow thin blades of willow leaves showering softly down at the back of her house from the leaning old trees. She liked it awfully: especially the yellow leaves on the earth.

She told Joe she thought it was all lovely, topping, fine! And he was awfully pleased. Certainly HE looked fit enough.

The mother of the helping youth gave them dinner at half-past twelve. The afternoon was all sunshine and little jobs to do, after she had dried the dishes for the mother of the youth.

“Not long now, miss, before you’ll be cooking at this range: and a good little range it is.”

“Not long now, no!” echoed Hester, in the hot little wooden kitchen, that was over-heated from the range.

The woman departed. After tea, the youth also departed and Joe and Hester shut up the chickens and the pigs. It was nightfall. Hester went in and made the supper, feeling somehow a bit of a fool, and Joe made a fire in the living-room, he feeling rather important and luscious.

He and Hester would be alone in the bungalow, till the youth appeared next morning. Six months ago, Hester would have enjoyed it. They were so perfectly comfortable together, he and she. They had been friends, and his family and hers had been friends for years, donkey’s years. He was a perfectly decent boy, and there would never have been anything messy to fear from him. Nor from herself. Ye Gods, no!

But now, alas, since she had promised to marry him, he had made the wretched mistake of falling “in love” with her. He had never been that way before. And if she had known he would get this way now, she would have said decidedly: Let us remain friends, Joe, for this sort of thing is a come-down. Once he started cuddling and petting, she couldn’t stand him. Yet she felt she ought to. She imagined she even ought to like it. Though where the OUGHT came from, she could not see.

“I’m afraid, Hester,” he said sadly, “you’re not in love with me as I am with you.”

“Hang it all!” she cried. “If I’m not, you ought to be jolly well thankful, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

Which double-barrelled remark he heard, but did not register. He never liked looking anything in the very pin-point middle of the eye. He just left it, and left all her feelings comfortably in the dark. Comfortably for him, that is.

He was extremely competent at motor-cars and farming and all that sort of thing. And surely she, Hester, was as complicated as a motorcar! Surely she had as many subtle little valves and magnetos and accelerators and all the rest of it, to her make-up! If only he would try to handle HER as carefully as he handled his car! She needed starting, as badly as ever any automobile did. Even if a car had a self-starter, the man had to give it the right twist. Hester felt she would need a lot of cranking up, if ever she was to start off on the matrimonial road with Joe. And he, the fool, just sat in a motionless car and pretended he was making heaven knows how many miles an hour.

This evening she felt really desperate. She had been quite all right doing things with him, during the afternoon, about the place. Then she liked being with him. But now that it was evening and they were alone, the stupid little room, the cosy fire, Joe, Joe’s pipe, and Joe’s smug sort of hypocritical face, all was just too much for her.

“Come and sit here, dear,” said Joe persuasively, patting the sofa at his side. And she, because she believed a NICE girl would have been only too delighted to go and sit “there”, went and sat beside him. But she was boiling. What cheek! What cheek of him even to have a sofa! She loathed the vulgarity of sofas.

She endured his arm round her waist, and a certain pressure of his biceps which she presumed was cuddling. He had carefully knocked his pipe out. But she thought how smug and silly his face looked, all its natural frankness and straight-forwardness had gone. How ridiculous of him to stroke the back of her neck! How idiotic he was, trying to be lovey-dovey! She wondered what sort of sweet nothings Lord Byron, for example, had murmured to his various ladies. Surely not so blithering, not so incompetent! And how monstrous of him, to kiss her like that.

“I’d infinitely rather you’d play to me, Joe,” she snapped.

“You don’t want me to play to you to-night, do you, dear?” he said.

“Why not to-night? I’d love to hear some Tchaikowsky, something to stir me up a bit.”

He rose obediently and went to the piano. He played quite well. She listened. And Tchaikowsky might have stirred her up all right. The music itself, that is. If she hadn’t been so desperately aware that Joe’s love-making, if you can call it such, became more absolutely impossible after the sound of the music.

“That was fine!” she said. “Now do me my favourite nocturne.”

While he concentrated on the fingering, she slipped out of the house.

Oh! she gasped a sigh of relief to be in the cool October air. The darkness was dim. In the west was a half moon freshly shining, and all the air was motionless, dimness lay like a haze on the earth.

Hester shook her hair, and strode away from the bungalow, which was a perfect little drum, re-echoing to her favourite nocturne. She simply rushed to get out of ear-shot.

Ah! the lovely night! She tossed her short hair again, and felt like Mazeppa’s horse, about to dash away into the infinite. Though the infinite was only a field belonging to the next farm. But Hester felt herself seething in the soft moonlight. Oh! to rush away over the edge of the beyond! if the beyond, like Joe’s bread-knife, did have an edge to it. “I know I’m an idiot,” she said to herself. But that didn’t take away the wild surge of her limbs. Oh! If there were only some other solution, instead of Joe and his spooning. Yes, SPOONING! The word made her lose the last shred of her self-respect, but she said it aloud.

There was, however, a bunch of strange horses in this field, so she made her way cautiously back through Joe’s fence. It was just like him, to have such a little place that you couldn’t get away from the sound of his piano, without trespassing on somebody else’s ground.

As she drew near the bungalow, however, the drumming of Joe’s piano suddenly ceased. Oh, Heaven! She looked wildly round. An old willow leaned over the stream. She stretched, crouching, and with the quickness of a long cat, climbed up into the net of cool-bladed foliage.

She had scarcely shuffled and settled into a tolerable position when he came round the corner of the house and into the moonlight, looking for her. How dare he look for her! She kept as still as a bat among the leaves, watching him as he sauntered with erect, tiresomely manly figure and lifted head, staring round in the darkness. He looked for once very ineffectual, insignificant, and at a loss. Where was his supposed male magic? Why was he so slow and unequal to the situation?

There! He was calling softly and self-consciously: “Hester! Hester! Where have you put yourself?”

He was angry really. Hester kept still in her tree, trying not to fidget. She had not the faintest intention of answering him. He might as well have been on another planet. He sauntered vaguely and unhappily out of sight.

Then she had a qualm. “Really, my girl, it’s a bit thick, the way you treat him! Poor old Joe!”

Immediately something began to hum inside her: “I hear those tender voices calling Poor Old Joe!”

Nevertheless, she didn’t want to go indoors to spend the evening tête-à-tête — my word! — with him.

“Of course it’s absurd to think I could possibly fall in love like that. I would rather fall into one of his pig-troughs. It’s so frightfully common. As a matter of fact, it’s just a proof that he doesn’t love me.”

This thought went through her like a bullet. “The very fact of his being in love with me proves that he doesn’t love me. No man that loved a woman could be in love with her like that. It’s so insulting to her.”

She immediately began to cry, and fumbling in her sleeve for her hanky, she nearly fell out of the tree. Which brought her to her senses.

In the obscure distance she saw him returning to the house, and she felt bitter. “Why did he start all this mess? I never wanted to marry anybody, and I certainly never bargained for anybody falling in love with me. Now I’m miserable, and I feel abnormal. Because the majority of girls must like this inlove business, or men wouldn’t do it. And the majority must be normal. So I’m abnormal, and I’m up a tree. I loathe myself. As for Joe, he’s spoilt all there was between us, and he expects me to marry him on the strength of it. It’s perfectly sickening! What a mess life is. How I loathe messes!”

She immediately shed a few more tears, in the course of which she heard the door of the bungalow shut with something of a bang. He had gone indoors, and he was going to be righteously offended. A new misgiving came over her.

The willow tree was uncomfortable. The air was cold and damp. If she caught another chill she’d probably snuffle all winter long. She saw the lamplight coming from the window of the bungalow, and she said “Damn!” which meant, in her case, that she was feeling bad.

She slid down out of the tree, and scratched her arm and probably damaged one of her nicest pair of stockings. “Oh, hang!” she said with emphasis, preparing to go into the bungalow and have it out with poor old Joe. “I will NOT call him Poor Old Joe!”

At that moment she heard a motor-car slow down in the lane, and there came a low, cautious toot from a hooter. Headlights shone at a standstill near Joe’s new iron gate.

“The cheek of it! The unbearable cheek of it! There’s that young Henrietta come down on me!”

She flew along Joe’s cinder-drive like a M?nad.

“Hello, Hester!” came Henrietta’s young voice, coolly floating from the obscurity of the car. “How’s everything?”

“What cheek!” cried Hester. “What amazing cheek!” She leaned on Joe’s iron gate and panted.

“How’s everything?” repeated Henrietta’s voice blandly.

“What do you mean by it?” demanded Hester, still panting.

“Now, my girl, don’t go off at a tangent! We weren’t coming in unless you came out. You needn’t think we want to put our noses in your affairs. We’re going down to camp on Bonamy. Isn’t the weather too divine!”

Bonamy was Joe’s pal, also an old artillery man, who had set up a “farm” about a mile farther along the land. Joe was by no means a Robinson Crusoe in his bungalow.

“Who are you, anyway?” demanded Hester.

“Same old birds,” said Donald, from the driver’s seat. Donald was Joe’s brother. Henrietta was sitting in front, next to him.

“Same as ever,” said Teddy, poking his head out of the car. Teddy was a second cousin.

“Well,” said Hester, sort of climbing down. “I suppose you may as well come in, now you ARE here. Have you eaten?”

“Eaten, yes,” said Donald. “But we aren’t coming in this trip, Hester; don’t you fret.”

“Why not?” f............