The Expensive Halo by Tey Josephine

Author:Tey, Josephine [Tey, Josephine]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General Fiction

Chapter XII

Gareth went home by bus, although it took much longer than the Underground, because he felt that he wanted the lights and the traffic as an obbligato to the things which were singing in his head. He had a vague feeling that if he had to endure the sepulchral atmosphere and mummified figures of the Underground to-night he would burst. All the way home the exultation in him span itself into music; mad, lovely music, as triumphant as the buses which charged past within a foot of his nose, as dancing as the lights, as full of power and radiance as the tall buildings, flood-lit against the sky. So that it was not until he stepped off the bus at the corner of Sark Street that he remembered Molly.

Ursula had never forgotten her for one moment; from the time that Gareth’s little careless sentence had hit her with the force of a bullet, Molly had never ceased to be somewhere in her mind. But Gareth had been so carried away that the world he knew had ceased to exist for him; he had almost forgotten his own identity. Now he remembered it with a shock. He was Gareth Ellis, and he had been unfaithful to Molly. Not unfaithful in the modern sense, but unfaithful nevertheless.

“What!” said his other self. “Unfaithful because you happen to have kissed another woman! Don’t be silly!” But he knew it wasn’t that. He was unfaithful because Ursula filled his whole being to the exclusion of everyone and everything else. Molly, kind pleasant little Molly, was a pale shadow in the background. He might have kissed many women without disturbing by a hair’s breadth the small throne that was Molly’s; but if he had never kissed Ursula at all he would still have been hopelessly unfaithful to Molly. He had never felt for Molly, never felt for anyone, what he felt for Ursula. In those first days after he met her, when to let his thoughts dwell on her had been an exquisite joy, he had stilled the vague pricks of conscience by telling himself that he could worship Ursula with impunity both to himself and to Molly, since she was a star so far from his orbit that his admiration of her was no more harmful (and much more helpful) than going to church and praying to God. He had taken to walking through the square in the mornings on the way to rehearsal, not so that he might see her but because it gave him a heady satisfaction to tread the same pavement which she trod. He would remind himself as he came nearer to the magic fifty yards in front of her house how quiet the square was and how few people walked on that piece of pavement, so that his feet might be resting exactly where hers had been the last to tread. He did not glance at the house. He felt nearer to her without that. The sight of the

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