Faster! Faster! by E. M. Delafield Page A

profoundly, and always went on long after they should have come to an end—either because he lacked the courage to make a break or because the woman refused to admit that their passion could last for anything less than eternity. He had long ago resolved never to marry. This was partly because he distrusted entirely his own capacity for making any woman happy, and partly because, inthe last analysis, freedom to do his own work in his own way was the thing that he most wanted.
    His life at Oxford suited him exactly. He wanted to live amongst books, to talk with men whose interests were the same as his own, to write, and to make love to a woman when the desire to do so became over-mastering.
    The major emotional crisis of his life had been over more than ten years ago. Never, he supposed, would he love again as he had loved the young, unhappy wife of one of his best friends.
    The affair had ended, curiously, with the death of his friend. The lovers—they had been lovers in the full sense of the word—had been confronted with the discovery that they had no longer any wish to spend the rest of their lives together in a joint domesticity.
    How he blessed her still for the candour and the generosity with which she had followed him all the way, in their painful and searching struggle to attain to the disappointing, humiliating truth!
    Since then he had cared deeply—though far less deeply—for two women, both of them unmarried, although neither was in her early youth.
    The first of them, frankly out for a passionate affair and nothing more, had been a reckless and joyous companion throughout a long summer holiday in Bavaria.
    She still wrote to him; and they met occasionally, without emotion, excepting friendly pleasure, on either side.
    The other, a passionate, intelligent creature of violent moods, had speedily exhausted both Quarrendonand herself. They had parted, only to come together again, and part again.
    The final severance had been three years ago.
    Quarrendon had not deluded himself, then or at any time, that he was finished with emotional vicissitudes. He knew only too well that sooner or later the fatal spark would be struck again. He was not even sure that he would, wholly, regret it.
    Sheer chance had led him into Claudia Winsloe’s office. He had found her intelligence and vitality stimulating, and had been faintly flattered besides that she should take the trouble to make herself attractive to him—for Quarrendon was under no illusions as to his looks, his absence of social adroitness, and his middle-age.
    As he had told Sylvia, people always interested him. Claudia interested him very definitely. He felt that he would like to see her away from her office surroundings.
    She still interested him—but it was Sylvia, twenty-one years his junior, with whom he had now fallen in love. Quarrendon realized it with something like dismay, but it was dismay that was rapidly becoming submerged in sweetness.
    Her youth, her vulnerability, her transparent candour, all moved him profoundly. Her loveliness, although it gave him an exquisite pleasure, was perhaps the least factor in the growing attraction of which he was so acutely aware.
    When he found that Sylvia was drawn towards him, as he towards her, Quarrendon knew that he must fight a losing battle.
(4)
    At Arling, Claudia was at her desk, a wild confusion of papers all round her, her fingers flying expertly over the keys of her typewriter.
    It was hot, and every now and then she pushed her dark hair off her forehead. But never for one moment did she relax.
    The parlour-maid appeared at the door and made a trivial announcement concerning the cook’s requirements.
    â€œI’ll come,” said Claudia.
    She took up her keys and went.
    As soon as she had re-established herself at her machine, the telephone-bell rang.
    The telephone was in a singularly inconvenient position in the hall.
    Claudia listened to a full exposition from the laundry