"Oh no, not everything; I saw how little I could get into this scrap of a house. I only brought away what I required." Fleda wondered; with her free imagination she could wonder even while her cheek stung from a slap. "To the Registrar?"!

"Oh, I see." Her friend was silent a minute. "You use sometimes such odd expressions. Well, I shall last a little, but I sha'n't last forever." Mrs. Gereth met that allusion with a prompt firmness that made almost insolently light of any ground of complaint, and Fleda's own sense of responsibility was now so vivid that all resentments turned comparatively pale. She had no heart to produce a grievance; she could only, left as she was with the little mystery on her hands, produce, after a moment, a question. "How then do you come to know that your son has ever thought—"

Fleda had listened in awe. "And no one at Poynton said anything? There was no alarm?" "What sort of coercion?" said Mrs. Gereth. "Then why doesn't she do it?"