After half a morning spent chiefly in listening to Constance’s hopeless comments on the monstrous letter, Sophia said suddenly that she must take the dogs for an airing. Constance did not feel equal to walking out, and she would not drive. She did not want Sophia to “venture,” because the sky threatened. However, Sophia did venture, and she returned a few minutes late for lunch, full of vigour, with two happy dogs. Constance was moodily awaiting her in the dining room. Constance could not eat. But Sophia ate, and she poured out cheerfulness and energy as from a source inexhaustible. After lunch it began to rain. Constance said she thought she should retire directly to the sitting-room. “I’m coming too,” said Sophia, who was still wearing her hat and coat and carried her gloves in her hand. In the pretentious and banal sitting-room they sat down on either side the fire. Constance put a little shawl round her shoulders, pushed her spectacles into her grey hair, folded her hands, and sighed an enormous sigh: “Oh, dear!” She was the tragic muse, aged, and in black silk.
“I tell you what I’ve been thinking,” said Sophia, folding up her gloves.
“What?” asked Constance, expecting some wonderful solution to come out of Sophia’s active brain.
“There’s no earthly reason why you should go back to Bursley. The house won’t run away, and it’s costing nothing but the rent. Why not take things easy for a bit?”
“And stay here?” said Constance, with an inflection that enlightened Sophia as to the intensity of her dislike of the existence at the Rutland.
“No, not here,” Sophia answered with quick deprecation. “There are plenty of other places we could go to.”
“I don’t think I should be easy in my mind,” said Constance. “What with nothing being settled, the house—”
“What does it matter about the house?”
“It matters a great deal,” said Constance, seriously, and slightly hurt. “I didn’t leave things as if we were going to be away for a long time. It wouldn’t do.”
“I don’t see that anything could come to any harm, I really don’t!” said Sophia, persuasively. “Dirt can always be cleaned, after all. I think you ought to go about more. It would do you good—all the good in the world. And there is no reason why you shouldn’t go about. You are perfectly free. Why shouldn’t we go abroad together, for instance, you and I? I’m sure you would enjoy it very much.”
“Abroad?” murmured Constance, aghast, recoiling from the proposition as from a grave danger.
“Yes,” said Sophia, brightly and eagerly. She was determined to take Constance abroad. “There are lots of places we could go to, and live very comfortably among nice English people.” She thought of the resorts she had visited with Gerald in the sixties. They seemed to her like cities of a dream. They came back to her as a dream recurs.
“I don’t think going abroad would suit me,” said Constance.
“But why not? You don’t know. You’ve never tried, my dear.” She smiled encouragingly. But Constance did not smile. Constance was inclined to be grim.
“I don’t think it would,” said she, obstinately. “I’m one of your stay-at-homes. I’m not like you. We can’t all be alike,” she added, with her “tart” accent.
Sophia suppressed a feeling of irritation. She knew that she had a stronger individuality than Constance’s.
“Well, then,” she said, with undiminished persuasiveness, “in England or Scotland. There are several places I should like to visit—Torquay, Tunbridge Wells. I’ve always understood that Tunbridge Wells is a very nice town indeed, with very superior people, and a beautiful climate.”
“I think I shall have to be getting back to St. Luke’s Square,” said Constance, ignoring all that Sophia had said. “There’s so much to be done.”
Then Sophia looked at Constance with a more serious and resolute air; but still kindly, as though looking thus at Constance for Constance’s own good.
“You are making a mistake, Constance,” she said, “if you will allow me to say so.”
“A mistake!” exclaimed Constance, startled.
“A very great mistake,” Sophia insisted, observing that she was creating an effect.
“I don’t see how I can be making a mistake,” Constance said, gaining confidence in herself, as she thought the matter over.
“No,” said Sophia, “I’m sure you don’t see it. But you are. You know, you are just a little apt to let yourself be a slave to that house of yours. Instead of the house existing for you, you exist for the house.”
“Oh! Sophia!” Constance muttered awkwardly. “What ideas you do have, to be sure!” In her nervousness she rose and picked up some embroidery, adjusting her spectacles and coughing. When she sat down she said: “No one could take things easier than I do as regards housekeeping. I can assure you I let dozens of little matters go, rather than bother myself.”
“Then why do you bother now?” Sophia posed her.
“I can’t leave the place like that.” Constance was hurt.
“There’s one thing I can’t understand,” said Sophia, raising her head and gazing at Constance again, “and that is, why you live in St. Luke’s Square at all.”
“I must live somewhere. And I’m sure it’s very pleasant.”
“In all that smoke! And with that dirt!
