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Rh her relief it did not happen. She would not have liked to kiss Mrs. Perry, though she liked her.

She liked her with the calm and civilised part Of her intelligence, and at the same time obscurely hated her. She appreciated Mrs. Perry's good qualities, liked the way she treated herself, but would not have been sorry to hear that some calamity had befallen that lady, for example, the loss of her good looks. Teresa knew that an intimacy existed between Mrs. Perry and Basil, and she did not know the extent of it. Basil had assured her that it was not an emotional relation, except in so far as Mrs. Perry had an emotional need for a friend to whom she could talk freely and profoundly, and look for sympathy. But Teresa believed that Basil would lie in such a case, though probably in no other. With her he had proceeded on a general plan of extreme frankness. Recognising the impersonal and almost masculine element in her intelligence, and allowing it, perhaps, more weight than it really possessed in her total make-up, Basil had laid bare to her all his ideas and feelings, and most of his doings. For the first year of their marriage he had had nothing to conceal, and his natural disposition to frankness, rather brutal sometimes and partaking a little of the crystalline hardness of his nature, had had full sway.