Once she had tentatively approached the subject, but
Magda had clearly indicated that she had no intention
of discussing it.
Not even to Gillian, whom she had gradually come to
look upon as her closest friend, could Magda unveil
the wound to her pride. No one, no one in the
whole world, should know that she had been ready to
give her love—and that the offering had
been silently, but none the less decisively, rejected.
Diane’s warning now found its echo in her own
heart: “Never give your heart to any man.
If you do he will only break it for you—break
it into little pieces like the glass scent-bottle
which you dropped yesterday.”
“She was right,” Magda told herself bitterly.
“A thousand times right!”
THE BACK OF BEYOND
The season was drawing to its close. London lay
sweltering under a heat-wave which had robbed the
trees in the Park of their fresh June greenness and
converted the progress of foot-passengers along its
sultry pavements into something which called to mind
the mediaeval ordeal of walking over hot ploughshares.
Even the garden at Friars’ Holm, usually a coolly
green oasis in the midst of the surrounding streets,
seemed as airless as any back court or alley, and
Coppertop, who had been romping ever more and more
flaggingly with a fox-terrier puppy he had recently
acquired, finally gave up the effort and flung himself
down, red-faced and panting, on the lawn where his
mother and Magda were sitting.
“Isn’t it nearly time for us to go to
the seaside, mummie?” he inquired plaintively.
Magda smiled down at the small wistful face.
“How would you like to go to the country instead,
Topkins?” she asked. “To a farm where
they have pigs and horses and cows, and heaps of cream—”
“And strawberries?” interpolated Coppertop
pertinently.
“Oh, of course. Or, no—they’ll
be over by the time we get there. But there’ll
be raspberries. That’s just as good, isn’t
it?”
Gillian looked up, smiling a little.
“It’s settled we’re going ‘there,’
then—wherever it is?” she said.
“Do you think you’d like it, Gillyflower?”
asked Magda. “It’s a farm I’ve
heard of in Devonshire, where they want to take paying-guests
for the summer.”
Gillian, guessing from Magda’s manner that the
whole matter was practically arranged, nodded acquiescence.
“I’m sure I should. But will you?”—whimsically.
She glanced at the sophisticated simplicity of Magda’s
white gown, at the narrow suede shoes and filmy stockings—every
detail of her dress and person breathing the expensiveness
and luxury and highly specialised civilisation of
the city. “Somehow I can’t imagine
you—on a farm in the depths of the country!
I believe you’ll hate it.”
“I shall like it.” Magda got up restlessly.
“I’m sick of society and the theatre and
the eternal gossip that goes on in London. I—I
want to get away from it all!”
