‘But I can’t forget that you must have suffered so much and so unnecessarily, you poor child,’ he said, with an impatient sigh.

‘Oh-oh, no,’ Alison assured him, because, for the sake of her pride, she felt she must say something.

‘Why were you afraid to tell me, Alison? Was it that I had seemed so blind and stupid that you thought I wouldn’t understand?’

‘What-on earth do you mean?’ Alison flushed scarlet, wondering in a moment of furious, shocked humiliation if he were going to sentimentalise about her love for him just as he proposed to leave her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘I’m not trying to force your confidence. What really happened last night is your affair, not mine. But’-he touched her hair softly-’did you really suppose, my child, that you had to go away with him before I would understand?’

Alison felt her throat go dry.

‘What-what are we talking about?’ she said bewilderedly.

It was his turn to look taken aback, and a little anxious too.

‘Why, about you-you and Simon, of course. What is it, Alison? You’re not feeling faint or something, are you?’

She stared at him.

‘Are you-suggesting-that Simon and I-?’

‘Don’t, Alison,’ he said sharply. ‘Don’t you understand that there’s no need to pretend any more? It’s I myself who should be blamed, for leaving you so much alone and unloved-for being so blind and uncaring. It was not until we were at the cottage that week-end that I realised you loved him-and even then I thought it might be a passing infatuation; you seemed so afraid of it yourself.’

‘Did I?’ she said stupidly. ‘Whatever did I do that made you think that?’

‘Your coming along to me that night, you poor baby, as though you were running away from your own self, and then the next morning, when you were so upset after you had been talking to him-and you begged me to take you home, but would give me no explanation. It was pitifully clear.’

Alison passed her hand over her eyes, and wondered if she were going to scream. It was like some grisly farce, having Julian so earnestly insisting on the very thing she had fought so hard to escape.

‘So that was what you meant when you said you guessed at once where I had gone last night?’ she said slowly.

‘Yes, of course. I could have shot myself when I realised what I had driven you to. I’d been so unpardonably absorbed in my own affairs and feelings during those early days,. forcing you, in my colossal vanity, to listen to my confidences as though they were the only thing that mattered.’

‘You didn’t have to force me,’ Alison said faintly and irrelevantly.

‘No, I know. You were always so sweet in your sympathy and understanding,’ he told her quickly. ‘It’s not for me-’ He hesitated, and then went on a little diffidently:

‘It’s not for me to say anything; but you’re much too dear and good for Simon too, of course. Only if it’s him you love, you must have him.’

‘I don’t love Simon,’ she said flatly, but not as though she expected very much to be believed. She was beginning to feel sick and weary again with the utter futility of argument, Besides, it seemed to all of them such a marvellous solution if she would only love Simon.

She had come to this interview prepared to be brave and magnanimous about Rosalie. and now all that was happening was that she was being gently pushed back towards Simon, by Julian himself.

‘Poor little Alison,’ Julian said gently. ‘I expect you scarcely know what your feelings are by now.’

And at that something went snap in Alison’s brain.

‘I know perfectly well what my feelings are;’ she cried, her voice quivering with anger and pain. ‘I’ve known what they were from the very first moment, You all imagine you know what I think and am and want and feel. And you don’t-not any single one of you. You’re stupid, stupid, stupid!’

And, to her horror, she burst into the flood of furious tears which she had so desperately feared.

‘Alison-’ His arms were round her in a moment.

‘Oh, let me go, let me go!’ She was struggling and sobbing, scarcely knowing what she was saying.

‘Child, child, don’t cry so. No man’s worth such tears.’

‘No, you’re right,’ she sobbed furiously. ‘No man’s worth such misery. Not you-nor anyone else.’

‘I!’ Julian was thunderstruck.

‘Yes-you, you, you!’ gasped Alison in a passion of anger and misery beyond her control. ‘Are you a perfect fool that you never guessed? You, who understand me so well-"little Alison", who must be petted and protected- Alison with her "marvellous detachment" who will listen by the hour while you talk about Rosalie-Alison who loves Simon! Oh, that’s the supreme idiocy of all! It isn’t Simon-it never was Simon. Must you have it in words of one syllable? It’s you I love! And, oh, I wish I were dead.’

CHAPTER XI

‘BE quiet, darling. Do you hear me? You mustn’t cry like that. I can’t kiss you if you cry so.’

But he was kissing her, all the same-long suffocating kisses on her mouth. Kisses that stopped the words and the tears and almost her breath itself.

She lay still at last, quivering with spent emotion, catching her breath in little after-sobs that were like a child, in spite of her brave outburst of words.

‘You don’t-have to-kiss me just because-I cried,’ she said in a husky, sulky whisper.

He laughed tenderly at that.

‘I’m not kissing you because you cried. At least-a little because of that, of course. But mostly because I’m so desperately, frantically relieved-and because your dear red mouth is the sweetest thing in the world to kiss.’

Alison leaned her head back against his arm and stared at him.

‘I suppose I’m still asleep or something,’ she muttered. Then with a little smile she hid her face against him. ‘Anyway, it’s a heavenly dream,’ came in a muffled voice.

He rubbed his cheek affectionately against her hair.

‘It isn’t any dream, and you’re wide awake.’

‘But-but what about yesterday afternoon?’

She looked up again, and the smile was gone.

‘Yesterday afternoon? What about it?’ Julian asked.

A little of Alison’s angry bewilderment returned. She passed her hand over her forehead and pushed back her hair.

‘Did I or didn’t I see you with your arms round Rosalie, making love to her?’

An extremely complicated expression came over Julian’s face, and there was a slight pause.

‘As a matter of fact, my dear,’ he said at last, ‘you didn’t. I don’t want to sound ungallant, but I’m afraid what you probably saw was Rosalie with her arms round me, making love to me.’

‘It’s very much the same thing,’ Alison said sharply.

‘Oh, no, Alison. It’s something very different’

‘I don’t understand.’ She moved her head against him a little as though it ached, and at that he very tenderly stroked her hair.

‘I wouldn’t have chosen to be the one to tell the story, Alison dear,’ he said, ‘but the truth is the only thing possible between us now, and I think I had better be frank.’

She drew close against him.

‘Yes, please. We’ve both done enough of thinking we knew what the other meant and deciding we couldn’t say anything because it wouldn’t be fair to someone else and all that sort of thing.’

Julian smiled.

‘Very well, then. You’re thinking, aren’t you, that when Rosalie broke off her second engagement I was full of angry regrets at not being free to take things up with her again?’

‘Well, weren’t you?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘But you were fearfully put out when Audrey told us about the broken engagement. I remember, because-because it made me so frightened and miserable.’ Alison’s voice quivered.

He bent his head and touched her cheek with his lips.

‘I was put out-not because I wanted Rosalie, but because I didn’t, by then. And I wished to God she’d stay contentedly tied up to someone else.’