Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/83

 counselled. He had never achieved the fraternal so completely.

"It's not that I don't think," she said. "I think a great deal. And as for wisdom—there is not much more to learn once one has grown up. I am as wise as I need be—for myself.

"When are you going back to England?"

"If you would do one or two things for me I needn't go back until the autumn."

"You can't stay here all the summer."

"No," she said, looking round at the cypresses—how pitiful she was, in Howard's garden. "They say I couldn't, it would be too hot; I must go somewhere else. But if you could help me a little this autumn I could finish up the business then."

"I may have to be in Ireland then." He tore himself away from something brutally, and the brutality sounded in his voice.

She retreated.

"Of course," she said, "I know you ought to be there now—I was forgetting."

Because he was a person who barely existed for her (probably) she had always been gentle with him, almost propitiatory.