CHAPTER XIThey sat in silence round the breakfast table, but no conversation could have been more dire than their unspoken anger. The house was empty of guests and there was only Jean to break the danger of their intimacy.
There was nothing in the day itself to take off the sharp edge of their tempers. Rain was falling indeterminately from dun-coloured clouds upon a colourless earth. The only sound in the room was the faint vent of the flames in the small spirit-lamps on the sideboard, under the row of silver dishes. There was nothing unusual in the fact of their silence, only its quality was disturbing. They always talked at dinner, but to make up for it, they seldom if ever spoke at the breakfast table. Reggie and Ian wandered to and fro between the sideboard and the table, looking, in
