Mrs. Dryden rose as he entered. “Come along,” she said; “we’ll begin. In the matter of breakfast, three is a quorum.” She took her place at the head of the table and began to pour out coffee. Joan sat on her left and Eric went to the side-table to get her some scrambled eggs. As he bent over her to put the plate before her, he realised with a pang that it had all happened before. Each morning, that summer before her marriage, they three had been the first down to breakfast, and it had delighted him to wait on Joan and then secure the place next her. And now it seemed as if time had rolled back to that vanished summer, that Joan, sitting there, was still free, that Daphne, upstairs, had receded to a mere nothing in his life. Yesterday he had avoided Joan, had carefully refrained from even looking at her, for fear the sight of her should spoil his exciting preoccupation with Daphne. But now there was no avoiding her: he had to speak to her and meet her eyes, and as he did so he felt, under the physical exaltation with which he had woken an hour before, the stirrings of a deep remorse.
What do You think about Venus Over Lannery (1936)?
