She looked at him with a long, slow look, malevolent, supercilious.

‘You know all about it, don’t you?’ she said, with slow, cold, cunning mockery.

‘Enough,’ he replied, his face fixing fine and clear like steel. A horrible despair, and at the same time a sense of release, liberation, came over Hermione. She turned with a pleasant intimacy to Ursula.

‘You are sure you will come to Breadalby?’ she said, urging.

‘Yes, I should like to very much,’ replied Ursula.

Hermione looked down at her, gratified, reflecting, and strangely absent, as if possessed, as if not quite there.

‘I’m so glad,’ she said, pulling herself together.