Chapter V

AUNT ANNA sat in the pavilion waiting for her letters. But, uncharacteristically, she was doing nothing at all. A couple of papers, brought by the local grocer, rested unopened on the round table. She herself sat in the window-seat, with her feet up, leaning back against a couple of cushions. Her hands lay in her lap; her grey eyes wandered vaguely out upon the river below the windows and the park beyond.

It was a hot breathless noon. Across all the green spaces not a creature appeared. The cattle were under the beeches on one side, and the deer under the elms on the other: now and again, a faint movement in the shadow showed a head tossed against the swarming flies. The very water itself seemed depressed and flat, as if all the sting and effervescence were drawn out of it by the steady blaze of light that showed three feet behind the dark running streamers of weed and the pebbly patches of bottom. The birds were still. A single pigeon cooed far away, and suddenly left off, as if the effort were too great. Through the door on the left she could see across the lawn, where a single butterfly flickered against the green, the great house, drowsing, with all its eyes half-closed by the lids of the sun-blinds. She had even had the awnings put up outside the pavilion- windows.

Yet, though the day was one of peace and sleepiness, she was neither peaceful nor sleepy. There was a curious undefined sense of apprehensiveness in her whole being;

it had increased steadily and slowly through the last day or two. At first she had put it down, with her usual good sense, to nerves over-strained by the succession of hot days; and then to her own peculiar position and Nevill's absence under these circumstances. But her attempts at reassurance were not successful; and she had begun to perceive (as imaginative and rather superstitious people will perceive) small significant happenings about her that appeared full of omen. She knew perfectly well that she was superstitious, and that she had no right to be so. She had sternly put away these fancies; but they had returned. Just now she had relaxed her efforts, and was reviewing the little list.

She became absurdly superstitious at such times. For example, if she were desiring some event very keenly, she would " take omens," as she said, almost continuously. If, two flies crawling on the floor in a patch of sunlight, the one that looked the browner reached the shadow first, then the event would happen: if the other, then it would not. If, when the Angelus-bell rang, she could say the Salutation twice before the last of the nine strokes, then she would succeed in some little undertaking; if she could not, she would fail. Once or twice she had spoken of this habit of mind. Once she had defended it with a kind of humorous agnosticism to Nevill.

" We live under a very large number of laws," she had said, " about which we know nothing at all. And all these laws are interconnected like the strands of a net. Why shouldn't there be some real relation between them? Why shouldn't two flies crawling on the floor be a real symbol of something that's happening somewhere else? Besides, I tell you, it does come true. I don't mean every omen is infallible, but that a great number of them do show a general tendency."

" I'm surprised at you, Aunt Anna/' Nevill had solemnly answered. " Just you tell Father Richardson and see what he says."

" I shouldn't dream of it/' she said defiantly. " It isn't a sin."

" Yes, it is; it's in the Catechism."

" Bosh! " said Aunt Anna. " Besides I'd always sooner believe too much than too little. I heard a priest say the other day that Superstition was a by-product of Faith."

" No, he didn't: he said it was a waste-product. Because I was with you. I remember it perfectly."

" Well, it's a product, anyhow," said Aunt Anna. " And you shouldn't waste anything. It's all useful, if you know how to use it. Like a pig's bristles."

She was thinking of this now; because all her omens were being taken on the subject of Nevill, and it was these that she was reviewing. (Really her defence of omen-taking had something to be said for it.)

There was first the apprehensiveness in general.

Nevill had been gone exactly eleven days, because this was Monday, and he had gone on the Thursday week before. Well; the apprehensiveness had begun on Saturday. She had awakened with it; at any rate she had been conscious of it as she had hurried back from Mass to see if there were any news from him. But there was none. She had heard only two days before, and it was not likely that he would write again so soon. Neither had there been any letter on Sunday, nor, so far, on Monday. His last (Thursday's) letter had been one bubbling joy. He had written about Lord Maresfield, among other things, and had said that they were all going to the opera together that evening and that they were to meet on Saturday Madam Selva at the Hotel Cecil (he had in an earlier letter described the play they had been to on his first night in London; and the Academy). He had also said that the lawyers had things in hand; and had, of course, raved about Enid.

There had been, therefore, no justification at all for her apprehensiveness. Everything was going perfectly well. She would certainly have heard if there had been any lawdifHculty. Algy Lennox was there too, and Nevill was apparently seeing a good deal of him. That was all excellent: Algy, in spite of his tiresomeness about tennis, was a sane and pleasant companion. Nevill had dined out, too, once or twice, as well as with the Bessingtons. He was going to Ranelagh. He seemed as prosperous as possible.

Yet there the apprehensiveness had been; and here it was still. She had taken a perfect torrent of omens all the rest of Saturday and Sunday; she had even caught herself betting (so to speak) at Low Mass as to whether the server would get back from the credence-table before he began the Suscipiat. If he did, then things would go well with Nevill. If not, not. He had not; he had begun on the second step on his way home. And nearly all the other omens had gone wrong too. A stag had come out from the shade on Sunday afternoon, exactly when she finally settled that he must not. Jim had cried aloud " Mummy! " when she was expecting him to come, but had not finished counting the hundred which she had set as the point before which he must not call " Mummy " if things were to go well with Nevill. Yes; the apprehensiveness and superstition were certainly in full blast.

She was not quite sure as to what she meant by " things going well with Nevill." She had assimilated Mr. Morpeth's cheerful optimism sufficiently to accept the fact that if Nevill must marry Enid he must marry Enid. But she was not quite certain yet that he must marry her. " Things going well " represented, then, a rather vague ideal: to be frank, it meant to Aunt Anna that God's will should really be done and that it should make for Nevill's happiness— it was no more defined than that, when she tried to fix it.

But these voluntary omens were not the worst. The weight on her mind seemed to rise, rather, from a number of little external things that happened, quite apart from her deliberate volition.

First; her tremors had come on her once again, in the presence of the corniced door at the top of the stairs. She had come in from late Mass yesterday by the front door instead of through the gardens, because she had wanted to see whether it were blistering, as Masterson had told her. And, as she entered, in the broad sunlight, a minute or two after noon — under the most prosaic and least suggestive of circumstances — she had been completely certain that there was someone waiting for her there. There was a tall porter's chair, beyond the table, with its back to her, and, so assured was she that someone was there — perhaps Mr. Morpeth, or a friend from a neighbour's house — that she walked quickly round to the hearth. The chair was empty; and she looked round, a little puzzled, only realising then that her thought had been unjustified, yet wondering whether perhaps her visitor were not elsewhere. She had raised her eyes to the gallery; and, as they fell upon the door, she understood that her absurd fear of it had come on her again.

This would never do. She rang the bell.

" Masterson," she said, " I want the key of the West Bedroom. Would you ask Mrs. Templemore whether she has it?"

She had not been in the bedroom for several months. It had been cleaned and looked after, she supposed, as usual. She waited until Masterson came back with it; and then a thought struck her. Certainly she must face the room; but — but the facing of it alone in the dark (for the shutters were closed and the curtains, she supposed, drawn) was a little too much for her resolution.

" Just go up and undo the shutters, will you? "

The butler went up first and unlocked the door; she heard his feet on the polished boards, and followed him. As she came to the threshold, a great bar clanged within, and he was pulling back one side of the shutter as she entered.

" I think I'll have both," she said.

While he finished opening that window and was dealing with the next, she stood irresolute, looking about her. The great bed rose like a monstrous catafalque, with the curtains drawn so as to enclose it all round. The tables and sofa and chairs (she saw) were all as she remembered them; the washing-place was empty of towels and linen, and a sponging-tin stood in one corner.

" Thanks," she said, " that's all. I'll bring the key down when I come. Close the door, please." (She felt she must add this. Really she must face the thing properly.)

It was just a big, solemn, old-fashioned bedroom. There was a good, though worn, carpet on the floor; the furniture was mahogany and chintz — covered chiefly with dust-sheets; there was a door beside the bed, on the far side, that communicated with the bathroom, beyond which, again, was Nevill's room. She saw the key was in the door on this side.

She felt tremulous, but determined. She told herself she had been silly not to have been here before; it was simply its associations that haunted her. It was here that the end of the tragedy had come — there, beyond those enshrouding curtains. On the side nearest the gallery Nevill had sat, holding his father's hand; it was to that side that the fierce, defiant, bandaged head, with blazing sunken eyes, had leaned to whisper; it was on that side that it had fallen at last, deathly still — and no longer defiant.

Well; she must pull the curtains, and look into the bed.

She went towards it resolutely. If she hesitated, her nerves might snap. She took hold of the curtains nearer the bathroom door and drew them back; and for one sickening instant, her heart stood still. For there appeared to be lying within the bed a stiff sheeted figure....

Then, with set teeth, she tore back the sheet, and disclosed a rolled mattress....

She came out through the bathroom; and there were the familiar signs of occupation — the big wooden bowl of yellow soap, the stiff bath-brush, the exercise-machine hanging on the wall, even a pair of grass-slippers. She went on through Nevill's room. The bed was stripped — which looked dreary — but all else was as it should be, except that there were no mysterious garments and dressing-gowns hanging on the tall-hung pegs.

Well; there it was. There had been nothing there; there could be nothing. Yet she did not feel in the least reassured. As she stood in the hall again, exactly the same sense of a burdensome and sinister presence lay on her; and the door was ominous. She had not exorcised her ghost. It was a relief when Jim came bursting in from the garden with the collies....

The second unpleasant little happening was even more unreasonably disconcerting. It was connected with Jim himself.

She had taken him to afternoon Benediction at four o'clock on the same day; and as they came out their path to the gardens lay beside the Fanning grave, where old Sir Nevill had been carried down from the bedroom she had visited that morning. Never before, so far as she remembered, had Jim referred to this place, after he had first been told what it was, and the inscription on the top of the flat altar-tomb within the railings been read to him. This time, however, he stopped dead.

" Mummy," he said.

"Yes?"

" That's where Uncle Nevill is buried, isn't it? "

" Yes; they're all buried there," she said. " Come on, my boy: don't loiter."

" Oh! " said Jim, still not moving, and regarding the tomb with solemn eyes. " And I suppose Cousin Nevill will be buried there too? "

A faint sickness laid its hand on her heart. Yet it was just the kind of thing that Jim did suddenly say, without any context at all.

" Yes, my dear," she said softly. " And so will you, perhaps; and I too."

" Oh!... Is it a big room down there? "

She felt a violent desire to tell him to hold his tongue and come away. But it would scarcely be decent in a Catholic mother to avoid such things, when her son questioned her. As he put his inquiry she remembered the " room," as he called it — as she had seen it when it had been opened to receive first her husband's body and then his brother's — a narrow dark chamber, with niches on either side.

" No, my dear; it's not a big room. It's quite little. But it's much better to think about their souls."

" Oh! I know all about that," said Jim, with a touch of contempt. " I want to know about their bodies. Do they very soon "

"Jim! I'm not going to go on. — Well; the bodies go back to the dust again; but their souls are quite somewhere else."

" Yes; I know, Mummy. But I want to know whether the bodies "

" There's Mr. Morpeth," she said. " Run and ask him to come and speak to me."

Well; again that was all. But why in the world on that day of all days, when.she had been into the West Bedroom, should Jim be so greedy of knowledge as to the processes of the grave?

Here, then, in the pavilion, on this Monday morning, she sat and meditated. Jim was out riding with the dogs, and wouldn't be back till lunch. She meditated upon her apprehensiveness and her omens; she told herself several times not to be foolish and morbid; she longed for the letters.

Then at last they came. And, once more, it was Master-son who brought them.

" Letter from Sir Nevill, ma'am," he said, just as he had said before. And she, too, just as before, tore open the envelope first of all, and glanced through it.

" He doesn't say he's altered his plans, Masterson," she said, scarcely even thinking it strange, this time, that a servant should be so intimate. She understood better now how the old man loved his master.

" And Father Richardson's here, ma'am. Could he speak to you, he says."

While Father Richardson talked of some small parochial matters, her mind was still working. She was perfectly certain that, humanly speaking, he would not understand one thing about her tremors; but, after all, he was a priest as well. She still hesitated, however, up to the very moment when he stood up to go: and then took her decision swiftly.

" Can you spare a few minutes, Father? " she said. " I want to consult you about something."

The priest sat down again.

" I expect you'll think it very foolish of me," she said, " but — but I'm in what they call a ' state of mind.' " (She smiled rather piteously.) " I've got no sort of reason for it. But I feel anxious. And I don't even know what I'm anxious about."

" Oh, just nerves," said the priest reassuringly and sensibly.

" Yes, that's what I say to myself, Father; but it doesn't comfort me. It's about my nephew, of course. I keep on imagining things."

" What kind of things? " asked Father Richardson, prudently.

" That's just what I don't know — oh! — That he's going to have some misfortune, I suppose; or get ill or die, or be disappointed. Everything seems to point that way, and "; she stopped suddenly.

" I don't understand quite," said the priest. " I should have thought that his engagement and — and his state of health — were all most satisfactory. Of course, it's a pity Miss Bessington is not a Catholic; but I have the dispensation all right; and I'm sure that she's a most exceptional "

" Oh! it's not that a bit," she said. " I don't mean in that kind of way — I don't know what I mean."

Father Richardson said most politely and sympathetically that really he did not, either.

" Well; don't you know that sort of feeling one has that everything is going wrong? It's like a cloud; it hangs over everything, and depresses one horribly. And one can't put it away."

Father Richardson assured her again that he did not know what she meant, unless she referred — he put it quite gently — well — unless she referred to indigestion.

Then she saw that it was hopeless. It seemed to her odd that a priest should be so very materialistic about everything. She thanked her own instincts that she had not referred to omens.

" Well; I daresay you're right," she said, with an effort. " Thanks very much, Father. I — I expect you're quite right."

There was a footstep on the gravel, and again Masterson stood on the steps of the pavilion.

" Beg pardon, ma'am. Mr. Morpeth's here."

" Oh — yes — ask him to come out."

The butler retired.

" There was nothing else, Mrs. Fanning? " asked the priest, with an air of having completely justified his role of spiritual physician.

" No; nothing else, Father. I expect it's better not to speak of those things, isn't it? Good-morning, Father. Thank you so much. Sir Nevill will be down before the end of next week, I expect. But I'll let you know for certain, as soon as I can, whether he'll be here for the concert."

Father Richardson thanked her and bade her good-morning. He felt quite pleased at having been consulted, and at having dealt so adequately and reassuringly with her questions. What queer, fanciful people women were!

By the time that Mr. Morpeth's solid form was seen advancing across the lawn, she had taken up Nevill's letter again. (Again the others were unopened.) And, once more, she determined to speak to this layman frankly.

Even she, who had begun to know him so well, had been astonished at the perfect composure with which he had taken his daughter's death. She might have expected that for a day or two, or even a week, he would have kept up his resolution; but it was more than a month now since the girl had been buried; she herself had spoken with him again and again; she had sat in his garden one afternoon, and he had talked of his daughter exactly as if she were just on a short visit away from home: never yet had he shown even an effort not to falter or to give way.

He took off his hat gravely and replaced it again, as he came up the steps. Then again he took it off as he sat down and drew out his handkerchief.

"I just called about the concert," he said. "Father Richardson has sent me no notice of it. I think he thinks I should not come to it, so soon after my daughter's death. Most kind and tactful of him! But I do not feel in the least like that myself. I only wondered what the people would think if I came. Will you kindly advise me, Mrs. Fanning? I would not shock them for the world."

" I — I think they might not quite understand it," she said.

He inclined his head gravely.

" Thank you. That is sufficient."

He fumbled a moment in the pocket of his waistcoat. Then he drew out a small, flat object and laid it on the table.

" Then will you do me one more kindness? " he said. " There is a sovereign in that paper. Would you kindly purchase four tickets on my behalf, and distribute them to whomsoever you please? "

" That is kind of you. I will do it most gladly."

" Thank you," he said.

Then he took up his hat as if to go.

" No; stay, Mr. Morpeth. And I want to consult you about something."

He replaced his hat on the table.

She began very nearly as she had begun to the priest.

" I'm in what they call a ' state of mind,' " she said. " May I tell you all about it? "

He inclined his head.

Then she told him frankly and fully, first that she was in a mood of apprehensiveness about Nevill, and that she had no kind of reason for it.

"Here's his letter," she said; "that's just come. Read it, please."

He took it, drew out his glasses, wiped them on his handkerchief and began to read. (He looked exactly like a business man studying a document.) As he finished, she broke in again.

" You see it's quite satisfactory, as far as it goes. He tells me about meeting Madam Selva and what she said; and about the crush at the ' Cecil '; and how he went a walk in the Park and met a small boy rather like Jim and tried to help him to mend his ship; and how the ship wouldn't be mended: and then about his going to the Cathedral on Sunday, and how, although the choir sang wonderfully, he couldn't bear the music; and then about Enid, too. It's all natural enough, and quite in his own way, though it doesn't seem to me quite as cheerful as his last. But that's not the point."

" No? " he said, questioningly.

" No; I was unhappy long before the letter came. I've been like it ever since Saturday. And then there are the omens "

She stopped, wondering whether even to Mr. Morpeth she could speak of her foolishness; but, to her surprise, he showed none himself. He nodded gently when he had taken off his glasses and begun to wipe them again.

" I suppose you notice how things happen," he said, " like birds flying, or a shadow over the sun, and think they're signs? "

" How do you know? " she asked, amazed.

" Because I used to do it myself," he said, " until I learned how useless it was."

" You think it all nonsense, then? Just as I do? — at least, just as I know it is, really? "

" Not all nonsense," he said imperturbably. " I am entirely convinced, from simple observation, that there is some connection between — well, between different things that seem to have no connection. That there are laws that are true and active in all realms at once; and that sensitive or intuitive people can sometimes perceive them. Oh! no, Mrs. Fanning, I don't think it's all nonsense, at all."

" But why did you call it useless? "

"Well," he said, leaning back a little, "because if the thing is to happen it will happen. And, besides that, I do not think it quite — well — quite Christian in spirit. We should have more confidence in God. ' Take no thought ' said our Saviour — I forget the Catholic version, but it means that we should not fret and be anxious about the future. I should leave that kind of thing alone, Mrs. Fanning."

She was silent a moment.

" May I tell you two more things? " she asked.

" Why, certainly."

She told him then about the West Bedroom and Jim's curiosity as to the grave. He listened without moving.

" I put more trust in your own feelings," he said. " It is your intuition that interprets such events, anyhow. You would have thought nothing of them if you had not been already anxious."

She confessed that this was true.

" I daresay your intuition is quite right," he continued gently. " Many people have that gift — some more, some less. It is like — well, you won't be offended; but it is like a peacock who knows, even before the barometer, that rain is coming."

She smiled with an effort; but she felt a little sick.

" You mean you think I am probably right — in foreseeing misfortune? "

" Well; do not let us call it misfortune — we cannot possibly tell. Let us say that it is pain to one you love that is coming.... I think myself it is coming," he added, meditatively.

This time she had to make an effort even to speak.

"You think so?... To Nevill?... Why?"

He continued gently polishing his glasses, which he had held still for the last two or three minutes. Then he began to speak. She did not interrupt him till he had finished. His voice was quite quiet, as if he mused aloud.

" Well," he said, " if you will watch people carefully, you will practically always find that the type to which your nephew belongs — of which, in every way, he is so excellent an example — the type of happy optimist, who disregards suffering instead of really facing it, always has to suffer, and considerably more than other people. God Almighty, if I may say so, has made them almost violently happy — out of all proportion, so to say. Well, they cannot be left like that, or they would be one-sided. Well, they are prepared for suffering in a very marked manner: they are naturally buoyant; they can ignore, and therefore avoid pain; or they can bear it, in moderation, in virtue of their pride. Now that will not do at all, if they are to be conformed to the image of Christ. Therefore they must suffer; and suffer rightly."

He paused a moment. Then he continued:

" I have observed Sir Nevill; and — I need not say — I have learned to love him. And I see in him every sign that he will have to suffer — sharply. If he did not, I should be afraid for him. Now I know really nothing of the young lady to whom he is engaged. I have seen her twice only: once in the churchyard, and once I had the privilege of speaking to her when she was out with Sir Nevill in the park."

(Aunt Anna looked at him sharply; but she did not speak.)

" Well; I think it very likely that part of his pain must come through her. I may be very wrong about that, but I must confess that I formed an opinion of her. I have a terrible habit of doing so. I often try to correct it. And — and I think that she will be one occasion of suffering to him, whether now or later I do not know. But that is not all "

He paused again. Ah! this was the very point to Aunt Anna. She, too, had tried to think that all her apprehensiveness came from her knowledge of Enid — it might even be her jealousy of Enid. But this last day or two had taught her that this, at any rate, was not all. There was something even larger approaching — a cloud, greater than any man's hand, was coming up; and its shadow had fallen on the corniced door above the gallery.... But still she said nothing.

" That is not all. You will think me fanciful perhaps; but there is a shadow on this house, Mrs. Fanning. It fell on my own house first. I knew that it was there, too. It fell on my dear daughter — ah! a week before God took her to Himself. When Sir Nevill looked in at my window — when he was so good as to come across and bring me the news, I knew what he had come to say. But it was on his face too.

" Now, some men might call this a curse. Well, we may call it that if we will; so long as we remember that a curse is but the shadow of a blessing — that He Himself was made a Curse for us, who is our Blessing. That is all that the shadow is, Mrs. Fanning; it is the shadow of our Father's Hand."

There was dead silence as he ended, and fell again to polishing his glasses. The noon lay hot and still on park, and stream, and house. Far away, again, the wood-pigeon began his broken cooing: it was not till he ended that Aunt Anna drew a long, shivering breath.

"Ah! Not that!" she whispered. "Not on Nevill!"

He looked at her compassionately.

" Listen again," he said. " I think we spoke here once of the sins of the fathers being visited on the children. That is not a curse, Mrs. Fanning, as the word is ordinarily used. It is not a vindictive law; it is a law of mercy; that the love which should unite parents to children may do what love alone can do, and that is to turn suffering into joy and pain into atonement. It is when the punishment is not borne here — as if God Himself despaired — it is then that the horror comes.

" Now I know nothing of Sir Nevill's father except what you have told me. I do not listen to gossip "

She broke in:

" He — he was horrible."

" He was unlovable, let us say. Well, cannot he now be rendered lovable? I know no way except by pain. Would it not be a noble thing if his son could suffer for him, and be himself transformed into — well, into a Christopher? You and I know what Purgatory is — well "

" I can't bear it! " she cried.

" And you, too, have your part. You are bearing it now; and you will bear it better still if you will choose to understand. That is exactly what love means. You suffer because you love. If you did not love you would not suffer. Then go on; and suffer and love."

She broke suddenly into weeping.

She sat there again that evening after dinner, when Jim had gone to bed, and the stars were out. The breathless day had passed to breathless night. She sat here, at the open window, without even a shawl over her shoulders; there was not a breath to stir the thin silk curtains that hung over the wide-flung lattices. The house was dark, except for the oblong of light that was the door above the curved steps.

She felt weary in soul and body: but all resentment and resistance were gone. There was no joy yet; only passivity and expectancy. She was as one who has fought against a mortal sickness and has passed beyond fighting; and yet death will not come.

Every word she had heard from her old friend had met with the response of her understanding, although with the savage protest of her heart. She knew that it would be as he said; it was not Enid now that troubled her; there was not even a spark of jealousy left. Enid? Why, yes; no doubt she would be the forerunner of pain, the leader of the grim little procession that must trample over the heart of the lad she loved so much. But there was more than all that. Enid was not great enough to cast such a shadow as that which lay over all that she cared for.

But even her heart now had ceased to protest. It lay there, within her, inert and quiet; in pain, of course; but in pain that could no longer crush, since that on which it lay was already broken.

She had been right, then, from the beginning. Her misery in this dear pavilion, when his first letter had come from Rome, had been true enough in its instinct. Her deepening misery since Saturday had been its corroboration. Yet why had it come so swiftly? Was it that the shadow, too, was darkening as swiftly? Then when would the blackness fall?

Then suddenly she remembered, in an abrupt break of thought, that Nevill had said nothing as to having seen any doctor; and her heart leapt again in a broken kind of hope that there was nothing but some physical illness that impended and that this might yet be stayed off by prudence. She would write to Nevill to-morrow, and tell him that he must go at once, if he loved her. And then again her heart sank down. A shadow such as this was not just a matter that could be banished by a doctor's consulting-room and a few drugs. She would not banish it so, even if she could.

She would not banish it so, even if she could....

Yes, she had thought that; and as she reflected on her thought she perceived that even already she had begun, scarcely knowing it herself, to realise what had been said to her; to understand that Pain was not the greatest of evils; that it might be even not an evil at all, but a good; that a curse, if truly the shadow of a blessing, might be that very blessing that could come no otherwise than in a sombre dress.

The lawn was soaked in dew as she walked across it on her way back to the house, half an hour later; yet she did not know it till the chill struck straight through her thin silk stockings.

"Why; it's wet!" she murmured; and went on.

There had begun to rise in her, still incalculably fragile, still to be quenched out again by the faintest breath of personal desire, a thin flickering flame that warmed ever so slightly the cold misery of her heart. She had begun to see that there was a capability of joy in pain — no more than that; that if to love was to suffer, then also that to suffer rightly was to love. And love, after all, was the only

Jim was awake when she came softly into his room with a shaded light. He turned his big eyes upon her, unwinkingly.

"Mummy?" he said.

" Yes, my darling? Why aren't you asleep? " Jim passed over such an irrelevant question with the disdain of indifference.

" Mummy; did you mind what I asked you yesterday? " For a moment she forgot.

" Why — what about? "

" About — about Uncle Nevill's grave."

She paused. Then she spoke deliberately:

" No, my dear. At least I did; but I don't now."

As she came out into the gallery again she turned to the right instead of the left; and then stood considering. The house was quite quiet now; the servants were far away; and her maid not yet come up. Yet she had no fear. She was trying to remember whether she had taken out the key of the door between the bathroom and the west-room; and locked it after her.

Then she remembered that she had not.

She went straight through into Nevill's room, still carrying the shaded light she used for visiting Jim in bed, through the bathroom and into the place she had once dreaded so much. The bed stood still like a catafalque, with its curtains drawn once more; but she was not afraid.

She stood there, as if listening.

Then she spoke; as if she asked a question, and did not fear the answer.

"Yes?" she said.