Helen turned to her. "Did you go to church?" she asked. She had won her
sixpence and seemed making ready to go.
"Yes," said Rachel. "For the last time," she added.
In preparing to put on her gloves, Helen dropped one.
"You're not going?" Evelyn asked, taking hold of one glove as if to keep
them.
"It's high time we went," said Helen. "Don't you see how silent every
one's getting--?"
A silence had fallen upon them all, caused partly by one of the
accidents of talk, and partly because they saw some one approaching.
Helen could not see who it was, but keeping her eyes fixed upon Rachel
observed something which made her say to herself, "So it's Hewet."
She drew on her gloves with a curious sense of the significance of the
moment. Then she rose, for Mrs. Flushing had seen Hewet too, and was
demanding information about rivers and boats which showed that the whole
conversation would now come over again.
Rachel followed her, and they walked in silence down the avenue. In
spite of what Helen had seen and understood, the feeling that was
uppermost in her mind was now curiously perverse; if she went on this
expedition, she would not be able to have a bath, the effort appeared to
her to be great and disagreeable.
"It's so unpleasant, being cooped up with people one hardly knows," she
remarked. "People who mind being seen naked.
Pages:
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383