Mary smiled. “But why shouldn’t the good newspaper proprietor hurry up and become a multi-proprietor?” she suggested. “Why don’t you persuade Lord Sutcliffe to buy up three or four papers, before they’re all gone?” “Perhaps you are right,” she admitted. “Perhaps that is why He made us male and female: to teach us to love.”!

She rose and took his head between her hands and turned his face towards her. She had meant to scold him, but changed her mind and laid his head against her breast and held it there. She had thought it time for him to return indoors, but he pleaded for a visit to his beloved roses. He prided himself on being always able to pick roses on Christmas Day.

A lank, black-haired girl, with a pair of burning eyes looking out of a face that, but for the thin line of the lips, would have been absolutely colourless, rose suddenly from behind a bowl of artificial flowers. Joan could not suppress a slight start; she had not noticed her on entering. The girl came slowly forward, and Joan felt as if the uncanny eyes were eating her up. She made an effort and held out her hand with a smile, and the girl’s long thin fingers closed on it in a pressure that hurt. She did not speak. Mary lived in a tiny house behind a strip of garden. It stood in a narrow side street between two public-houses, and was covered with ivy. It had two windows above and a window and a door below. The upstairs rooms belonged to the churchwardens and were used as a storehouse for old parish registers, deemed of little value. Mary Stopperton and her bedridden husband lived in the two rooms below. Mary unlocked the door, and Joan passed in and waited. Mary lit a candle that was standing on a bracket and turned to lead the way. “You see, dear, I began when I was young,” she explained; “and he has always seen me the same. I don’t think I could live like this.”