had threatened nothing, had crushed down on nothing, and that yet pervaded
more and more the whole of life--that she should bring back to her old
deserted home not a touch of penitence and the incense of absurd devotions.
Friends of that sort, middle-aged, dull Englishmen, didn't, Imogen had
wisely surmised, write to one every week. It wasn't as if they had uniting
interests to bind them. Even a literary, a political, a philanthropic,
correspondence Imogen would have felt as something of an affront to her
father's memory, now, at this time; such links with the life that had
always been a sore upon their family dignity should have been laid aside
while the official mourning lasted, so to speak. But Sir Basil, she felt
sure, had no mitigating interests to write about, and the large, square
envelope that lay so often on the hall-table seemed to her like a pert,
placid face gazing in at the house of mourning. To-day, yes, she had wanted
to know, to see, and suspicions and resentments from dim had become keen.

And now, to complete it all, Jack did not understand. Jack thought her
unfair, unkind. He had left her with that unresolved discord between them.
A sense of bereavement, foreboding, and desolation filled her heart. On the
table beside her stood a tall vase of lilies that he had sent her, and as
she stood, thinking sad and bitter thoughts, she passed her hand over them
from time to time, bending her face to them, till, suddenly, the tears rose
and fell and, closing her eyes, holding the flowers against her cheek, she
began to cry.

That was what she had meant to be like, the pure, sweet aroma of these
flowers, filling all the lives about her with a spiritual fragrance. She
did so want to be good and lovely, to make goodness and loveliness grow
about her. It was hard, hard, when that was what she wanted--all that she
wanted--to receive these buffets from loved hands, to see loved eyes look
at her with trouble and severity. It was nothing, indeed,--it was, indeed,