DARK HESTER
and post-war London. She had had a miserable girlhood; her mother was dead and her father a parson in the Midlands. Hester had made her own living ever since leaving college. She had done really remarkable work. The Jessups thought it remarkable. She had travelled through Bolshevik Russia, risking her life, and written a series of articles for ‘The Protest,’ and she was tremendously interested in psycho-analysis and social reform.
‘A socialist, I suppose?’ Monica had blithely enquired.—And why not? Her youngest brother had been a provocative socialist, thirty years ago at Oxford, and had come home to call them all ‘pleasant thieves’—a phrase that made their father—jovial and caustic— with his rough tawny head—loudly laugh. But Clive said that Hester followed no isms of any sort; was completely detached and sane—‘The sanest person I have ever known, except you, Mummy.’
‘I must love her. I cannot keep him unless I can love her,’ Monica had thought. She remembered that she had knelt down and prayed for strength and wisdom and selflessness. And when he brought her was it not true that she had gone to meet her with unhostile, with hopeful eyes?
And now again she saw her, sitting in the open
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