Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on
Magda an altogether new point of view—the
viewpoint from which other people might conceivably
regard her actions. She had never troubled about
such a thing before, nor was she finding the experience
at all a pleasant one. But it helped her to understand
to a certain extent—though still only in
a very modified degree—the influences which
had sent Michael Quarrington out of England.
And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge
that he was still free, that he had not gone straight
from her to another woman, much of the resentful hardness
which had embittered her during the last few months
melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant,
tantalising but withal lovable and charming personality
of former days.
She was even conscious of a certain compunction for
her behaviour at Stockleigh. She had been bitterly
hurt herself, and since, for the moment, to experiment
with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of man
had amused her and helped to distract her thoughts,
she had not paused to consider the possible resultant
consequences to the subject of the experiment.
She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief
that after she had gone he would instinctively turn
to June once more, and that life on the farm would
probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually,
with the passage of time, her thoughts reverted less
and less often to the happenings at Stockleigh, and
the prickings of conscience—which beset
her return to London—grew considerably fainter
and more infrequent.
It was almost inevitable that this should be so.
With the autumn came the stir and hustle of the season,
with its thousand-and-one claims upon her thought
and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre
was nothing if not enterprising, and designed to present
a series of ballets throughout the course of the winter,
in the greater number of which Magda would be the
bright and particular star. And in the absorption
of work and the sheer joy she found in the art which
she loved, the recollection of her holiday at Stockleigh
slipped by degrees into the background of her mind.
Fraught with such immense significance and catastrophe
to those others, Dan and June—to Magda it
soon came to occupy no more than an incidental niche
in her memory.
CROSS CURRENTS
Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by
the tender, resistless hands of spring. And now
spring had given place to summer, and June, arms filled
with flowers, was converting the earth into a garden
of roses.
Magda’s car, purring its way southward along
the great road from London, sped between fields that
still gleamed with the first freshness of their young
green, while through the open window drifted vagrant
little puffs of clean country air, coming delicately
to her nostrils, fragrant of leaf and bloom.
