"Well, then, let him take the only way to get it satisfied." She had the sense for a while of Mrs. Gereth's regarding her with the detachment of some stern, clever stranger. "Then what's the matter with you? Why do you want me to give in?"!

"So that of course she misses them." Fleda wondered; with her free imagination she could wonder even while her cheek stung from a slap. "To the Registrar?"

"Wherever he is, I can bear it," Fleda said. "But I haven't the least idea where he is." "About its being her that thinks she has gone too far." This was still slightly obscure, but now Fleda understood. "It mustn't seem to come from her at all, don't you know? That would only make Mummy worse." Fleda smiled down at her companion, who, cloaked and perceptibly bowed, leaned on her heavily and gave her an odd, unwonted sense of age and cunning. She took refuge in an evasion. "He couldn't tell me anything that I didn't know pretty well already."