And the spying? That had been all part of the game; his and Ethel's.
_They_ played for safety, if you like. They had _had_ to throw Lena off
the scent. They used Sybil Fermor and Lady Hermione and Barbara Vining,
one after the other, as their _paravents_. Finally they had used Lena.
That was their cleverest stroke. It brought them a permanent security.
For, you see, Hippisley wasn't going to give up his free quarters, his
studio, the dinners and the motor car, if he could help it. Not for
Ethel. And Ethel knew it. They insured her, too.
Can't you see her, letting herself go in an ecstasy of revenge, winding
up with a hysterical youp? "You? You thought it was you? It was
me--_me_--ME.... You thought what we meant you to think."
Lena still comes and talks to me. To hear her you would suppose that
Lawson Young and Dickey Harper never existed, that her passion for
Norman Hippisley was the unique, solitary manifestation of her soul. It
certainly burnt with the intensest flame. It certainly consumed her.
What's left of her's all shrivelled, warped, as she writhed in her
fire.
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