Chapter 23

Lance was both angry with his mother and sorry for her. He had made himself kiss her when they had reached the house. “We’re at cross purposes, mater.” She had talked to him and at him all the way through the gardens in a voice that was unhushed. She had the naked soul of a common child. She did not shrink from, or hurry by, those too public occasions. Like a common woman she would have exposed all her domestic disharmonies on her doorstep before a group of interested neighbours. “If I don’t understand you—who does…