Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/118

106 Nothing stops that though everything seems to interfere with it. And in a distraught, preoccupied way we are abominably fond of each other. ‘Fond’ is the word. But we are both too busy to look after either ourselves or each other.

“She is much more incapable than I am,” said Sir Richmond as if he delivered a weighed and very important judgment.

“You see very much of each other?”

“She has a flat in Chelsea and a little cottage in South Cornwall, and we sometimes snatch a few days together, away somewhere in Surrey or up the Thames or at such a place as Southend where one is lost in a crowd of inconspicuous people. Then things go well—they usually go well at the start—we are glorious companions. She is happy, she is creative, she will light up a new place with flashes of humour, with a keenness of appreciation....”

“But things do not always go well?”

“Things,” said Sir Richmond with the deliberation of a man who measures his words, “are apt to go wrong.... At the flat there is constant trouble with the servants; they bully her. A woman is more entangled with servants than a man. Women in that position seem to resent the work and freedom of other women. Her servants won’t leave her in peace as they would leave a man; they make trouble for her.... And when