“No,” laughed Joan. “At least, I don’t think so.” It was on her tongue to ask him, as so often she had meant to do of late, what had been the cause of her mother’s illness—if illness it was: what it was that had happened to change both their lives. But always something had stopped her—something ever present, ever watchful, that seemed to shape itself out of the air, bending towards her with its finger on its lips.!

Into the picture, slightly to the background, she unconsciously placed Greyson. His tall, thin figure with its air of distinction seemed to fit in; Greyson would be very restful. She could see his handsome, ascetic face flush with pleasure as, after the guests were gone, she would lean over the back of his chair and caress for a moment his dark, soft hair tinged here and there with grey. He would always adore her, in that distant, undemonstrative way of his that would never be tiresome or exacting. They would have children. But not too many. That would make the house noisy and distract her from her work. They would be beautiful and clever; unless all the laws of heredity were to be set aside for her especial injury. She would train them, shape them to be the heirs of her labour, bearing her message to the generations that should follow. “Tell me,” she said. “If it had been the photo of a woman with a bony throat and a beaky nose would you have read them?”

“Aye,” he answered, “I must be careful I don’t die on Christmas Day. It would make a fine text, that, for their sermons.” The second was a clumsy-looking, overdressed woman whom Miss Lavery introduced as “Mrs. Phillips, a very dear friend of mine, who is going to be helpful to us all,” adding in a hurried aside to Madge, “I simply had to bring her. Will explain to you another time.” An apology certainly seemed to be needed. The woman was absurdly out of her place. She stood there panting and slightly perspiring. She was short and fat, with dyed hair. As a girl she had possibly been pretty in a dimpled, giggling sort of way. Joan judged her, in spite of her complexion, to be about forty. Joan bore the germ of worry in her breast as she crossed the Gray’s Inn Garden. It was a hard law, that of the world: knowing only winners and losers. Of course, the woman was to be pitied. No one could feel more sorry for her than Joan herself. But what had Madge exactly meant by those words: that she could “see her doing something really big,” if she thought it would help him? There was no doubt about her affection for him. It was almost dog-like. And the child, also! There must be something quite exceptional about him to have won the devotion of two such opposite beings. Especially Hilda. It would be hard to imagine any lengths to which Hilda’s blind idolatry would not lead her.