Free I and My True Love by Helen MacInnes

herself, you’re still ruffled by Walter. That’s all. Vanity, vanity...
    * * *
    Minna, small and broad, with a gentle cow-like expression on her white peasant face, came into Sylvia’s room with the breakfast tray. She was a silent woman who never expected any attention. She had been brought up on a small farm in Austria, where her father had yelled his commands and his daughters had run to carry them out. Her husband must also have assumed that yelling was one of his inalienable rights, for she avoided Walter as much as possible, worked quickly, and was ready to scurry out of sight whenever the master himself appeared on the scene. It was only with Sylvia that she behaved like a normal human being. But she never said a word against men, as if a violent yell and a well-aimed blow might suddenly be delivered out of the heavens.
    “The young lady’s gone out already,” Minna reported as she laid the neat tray on Sylvia’s lap.
    “So early? Did Walter give her breakfast?”
    Minna, who never understood one-half of what Walter told her, could only shrug her shoulders. “And you’ve a nice present,” she said, remembering the vase she had left outside the door. She smiled as she brought it into the room, holding it up high, delighted with the surprise she was helping to give.
    Sylvia looked at the masses of red roses. “Who sent them?” She sipped her coffee slowly.
    “There was no card.” Minna set the vase on the dressing-table, so that the roses were reflected in the large mirror. “So beautiful, such expense,” she said admiringly. “Today we must order,” she added almost in the same breath and pulled out from her apron pocket a slip of paper filled with her jagged writing.
    “Oh, yes.” But Sylvia still looked at the red roses. And she knew it was Jan who had sent them. “Take them downstairs, Minna.”
    Then she studied today’s order, but she couldn’t concentrate. “This seems all right.” She handed the piece of paper back to Minna. She looked again at the roses. “Has Mr. Pleydell had breakfast?” She averted her eyes from the flowers.
    “Yes.” Minna looked surprised. Mr. Pleydell was never late.
    Did I hope to break the spell, Sylvia wondered, by speaking Payton’s name?
    The telephone rang, first of all downstairs, then in the room.
    “Perhaps the young soldier calling for Miss Jerold again,” Minna suggested.
    “Again?”
    Minna nodded and smiled, and left quickly. She had forgotten to take the roses with her, after all.
    Sylvia lifted the receiver. “Hallo,” she said.
    “Sylvia.” It was Jan Brovic.
    She stared across at the dressing-table. Oh, Jan, why do this, why torment us both?
    “Sylvia—are you there? Can you hear me?”
    No, no... And yet she listened, listened to the worried, urgent voice and her eyes filled with tears. She took a deep breath to steady herself.
    “Sylvia!”
    “No. Please... no.” She put down the receiver. Then she covered her face with her hands. She was remembering Payton as he had stood at her door last night. He had known all along about Jan; he had never charged her with it. She had gone on living in his house, and he had behaved as if nothing had happened. Until last night. And even then, the admission had been made in Payton’s own way as if to save her shame and embarrassment. Instead, her shame had doubled: guilt was twice as heavy when you hurt someone who protected you so well.
    The telephone rang again.
    She didn’t move to answer it.
    How had Payton found out? And when? When? The word kept ringing as insistently as the telephone bell.
    Then at last there was silence.
    Silence. And the roses, filling the room with their colour and fragrance. She pushed the breakfast tray aside. She sat quite still, her arms clasped around her knees, her eyes watching the flowers, her thoughts filled with the memories that were coming to life again.
    * * *
    May. It had been early May. And a war was over in Europe. “I’m having a party,” Miriam