It was all very well to
feel one ought to share, and to make a beau geste and do it, but the
beaux gestes Scrap had known hadn't made anybody happy. Nobody really
liked being the object of one, and it always meant an effort on the
part of the maker. Still, she had to admit there was no effort about
Lotty; it was quite plain that everything she did and said was
effortless, and that she was just simply, completely happy.
And so Mrs. Wilkins was; for her doubts as to whether she had had
time to become steady enough in serenity to go on being serene in
Mellersh's company when she had it uninterruptedly right round the
clock, had gone by the middle of the week, and she felt that nothing
now could shake her. She was ready for anything. She was firmly
grafted, rooted, built into heaven. Whatever Mellersh said or did, she
would not budge an inch out of heaven, would not rouse herself a single
instant to come outside it and be cross. On the contrary, she was
going to pull him up into it beside her, and they would sit comfortably
together, suffused in light, and laugh at how much afraid of him she
used to be in Hampstead, and at how deceitful her afraidness had made
her. But he wouldn't need much pulling. He would come in quite
naturally after a day or two, irresistibly wafted on the scented
breezes of that divine air; and there he would sit arrayed in stars,
thought Mrs.
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