Читать книгу Wintersmoon онлайн

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Janet switched off the light, got into bed, lay down, staring into the darkness. It was true. Rosalind had not the character. Janet was no fool about her sister; she knew that she was selfish, comfort-loving, hard in sudden unexpected places. She, Janet, was never quite sure whether Rosalind loved her or no. Sometimes she did, and sometimes most certainly she did not. She was elusive, always just out of Janet's reach. And was not that very elusiveness partly responsible for Janet's passion? Do we not love the most those persons of whose love for us we are not quite sure?

But darling Rosalind, there was more, far more, than that in Janet's love for her. The struggle of these ten years, the increasing struggle as prices had gone up and up and the tiny investments had gone down and down, the sense that there was no one in the world who cared, no one but distant Medley and Grandison relations, no one at least whom proud Janet would humiliate herself to beg from. Her own best friends—Rachel Seddon, Mary Coane, Ada Darrant, Constance Medley—all women, by the way, older than herself, had they ever realised at all how desperate the struggle was for Janet and Rosalind? And were not they themselves also hard up like all their set, like all their world? Wasn't the need for more money the one cry that nowadays you heard on every side of you? Hadn't Connie Medley her hat shop, and wasn't Ada Darrant dressmaking, and hadn't Janet herself spent months of her life turning old shoes into new ones?