They gave him, certainly, what no woman could give him, not Helen
even. Warming at the thought of them, he went on to lay his case before
Mrs. Ambrose. Should he stay on at Cambridge or should he go to the
Bar? One day he thought one thing, another day another. Helen listened
attentively. At last, without any preface, she pronounced her decision.
"Leave Cambridge and go to the Bar," she said. He pressed her for her
reasons.
"I think you'd enjoy London more," she said. It did not seem a very
subtle reason, but she appeared to think it sufficient. She looked at
him against the background of flowering magnolia. There was something
curious in the sight. Perhaps it was that the heavy wax-like flowers
were so smooth and inarticulate, and his face--he had thrown his hat
away, his hair was rumpled, he held his eye-glasses in his hand, so
that a red mark appeared on either side of his nose--was so worried and
garrulous. It was a beautiful bush, spreading very widely, and all the
time she had sat there talking she had been noticing the patches of
shade and the shape of the leaves, and the way the great white flowers
sat in the midst of the green. She had noticed it half-consciously,
nevertheless the pattern had become part of their talk. She laid down
her sewing, and began to walk up and down the garden, and Hirst rose too
and paced by her side.
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