For a moment she did not take the violets. But while she stood just inside, holding the door, a strange thing happened. . . . Again she saw the beautiful fall of the steps, the dark garden ringed with glittering ivy, the willows, the big bright sky. Again she felt the silence that was like a question. But this time she did not hesitate. She moved forward. Very softly and gently, as though fearful of making a ripple in that boundless pool of quiet she put her arms round her friend. “My dear,” murmured her happy friend, quite overcome by this gratitude. “They are really nothing. Just the simplest little thrippenny bunch.” But as she spoke she was enfolded—more tenderly, more beautifully embraced, held by such a sweet pressure and for so long that the poor dear’s mind positively reeled and she just had the strength to quaver: “Then you really don’t mind me too much?” “Good night, my friend,” whispered the other. “Come again soon.” “Oh, I will. I will.” This time she walked back to the studio slowly, and standing in the middle of the room with half-shut eyes she felt so light, so rested, as if she had woken up out of a childish sleep. Even the act of breathing was a joy. . . . The _sommier_ was very untidy. All the cushions “like furious mountains” as she said; she put them in order before going over to the writing-table. “I have been thinking over our talk about the psychological novel,” she dashed off, “it really is intensely interesting.” . . . And so on and so on. At the end she wrote: “Good night, my friend. Come again soon.” Pictures Eight o’clock in the morning. Miss Ada Moss lay in a black iron bedstead, staring up at the ceiling. Her room, a Bloomsbury top-floor back, smelled of soot and face powder and the paper of fried potatoes she brought in for supper the night before. “Oh, dear,” thought Miss Moss, “I am cold. I wonder why it is that I always wake up so cold in the mornings now. My knees and feet and my back—especially my back; it’s like a sheet of ice. And I always was such a one for being warm in the old days. It’s not as if I was skinny—I’m just the same full figure that I used to be. No, it’s because I don’t have a good hot dinner in the evenings.” A pageant of Good Hot Dinners passed across the ceiling, each of them accompanied by a bottle of Nourishing Stout. . . . “Even if I were to get up now,” she thought, “and have a sensible substantial breakfast . . .” A pageant of Sensible Substantial Breakfasts followed the dinners across the ceiling, shepherded by an enormous, white, uncut ham. Miss Moss shuddered and disappeared under the bedclothes. Suddenly, in bounced the landlady. “There’s a letter for you, Miss Moss.” “Oh,” said Miss Moss, far too friendly, “thank you very much, Mrs. Pine. It’s very good of you, I’m sure, to take the trouble.” “No trouble at all,” said the landlady. “I thought perhaps it was the letter you’d been expecting.”