Read "The Stronger Influence" by Ethel Mills online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
During the first few days after her return to her sister's home time hung dismally for Esme. It would have been better had she gone back to work immediately; but there was a full week to term time, and during that week she found nothing sufficiently interesting to distract her thoughts from the desolating fact that she missed something out of her life. Her world was like a world without sunshine, flat and colourless, a place of neutral tints and drab impressions. She hated the house, she hated going out; most of all, she hated the people who visited her sister and gossiped over tea of every trivial matter in the common daily round. Those afternoon gatherings gave her mental indigestion. Yet at one time these things had seemed pleasant and natural. The inference was that there was something wrong with herself.
Her sister laid a hand on her secret very soon after her return. She had gone into Esme's room and taken up a book, which lay on the little table beside her bed, and opened it casually.