The Baron was addressed by his neighbour, Magdalen Dearing, whose husband he was supposed, perhaps quite wrongly, to finance, and Lady Sellingworth was left free for a conversation with Craven. “We were speaking about Beryl,” she began. Suddenly she felt hard, and she wanted to punish Craven, as we only wish to punish those who can make us suffer because they have made us care for them. “It seems that--they are all saying--” She paused. She wanted to repeat the scandalous gossip about Beryl’s visit to this mystery man, Arabian, immediately after her father’s death. But she could not do it. No, she could not punish him with such a dirty weapon. He was worthy of polished steel, and this would be rusty scrap-iron. “It’s nothing but stupid gossip,” she said. “And you and I have never dealt in that together, have we?” “Oh, I enjoy hearing about my neighbours,” he answered, “or I shouldn’t come here.” She felt a sharp thrust of disappointment. His voice was cold and full of detachment; the glance of his blue eyes was hard and unrelenting. She had never seen him like this till to-day. “What are they saying about Miss Van Tuyn?” he added. “Anything amusing?” “No. And in any case it’s not the moment to talk nonsense about her, just when she is in deep mourning.” With an almost bitter smile she continued, after a slight hesitation: “There is a close time for game during which the guns must be patient. There ought to be a close time for human beings in sorrow. We ought not to fire at them all the year round.” “What does it matter? They fire at us all the year round. The carnage is mutual.” “Have you turned cynic?” “I don’t think I was ever a sentimentalist.” “Perhaps not. But must one be either the one or the other?” “I am quite sure you are not the latter.” “I should be sorry to be the former,” she said, with unusual earnestness. Something in his voice made her suddenly feel very sad, with a coldness of sorrow that was like frost binding her heart. She looked across the big table. A long window was opposite to her. Through it she saw distant tree-tops rising into the misty grey sky. And she thought of the silence of the bare woods, so near and yet so remote. Why was life so heartless? Why could not he and she understand each other? Why had she nothing to rest on? Winter! She had entered into her winter, irrevocable, cold and leafless. But the longing for warmth would not leave her. Winter was terrible to her, would always be terrible.