"I'll do my best, Miss Marvell--But I'm afraid it will be impossible to finish to-day." And she looked wearily round the room laden with papers--letters, pamphlets, press-cuttings--on every available table and shelf. Gertrude gave a rather curt assent. Her reason told her the thing was impossible; but her will chafed against the delay, which her secretary threatened, of even a few hours in the resumption of her work in London, and the re-housing of all its tools and materials. She was a hard mistress; though no harder on her subordinates than she was on herself. She began to turn her own hand to the packing, and missing a book she had left in the drawing-room the night before, she went to fetch it. It was again a morning of frosty sunshine, and the garden outside lay in dazzling light. The drawing-room windows were open, and through one of them Gertrude perceived Delia moving about outside on the whitened grass. She was looking for the earliest snowdrops which were just beginning to bulge from the green stems, pushing up through the dead leaves under the beech trees. She wore a blue soft shawl round her head and shoulders, and she was singing to herself. As she raised herself from the ground, and paused a moment looking towards the house, but evidently quite unconscious of any spectators, Gertrude could not take her eyes from the vision she made. If radiant beauty, if grace, and flawless youth can "lift a mortal to the skies," Delia stood like a young goddess under the winter sun. But there was much more than beauty in her face. There was a fluttering and dreamy joy which belongs only to the children of earth. The low singing came unconsciously from her lips, as though it were the natural expression of the heart within. Gertrude caught the old lilting tune:-- "For oh, Greensleaves was all my joy-- For oh, Greensleaves was my heart's delight-- And who but my lady Greensleaves--" The woman observing her did so with a strange mixture of softness and repulsion. If Gertrude Marvell loved anybody, she loved Delia--the captive of her own bow and spear, and until now the most loyal, the most single-minded of disciples. But as she saw Delia walk away to a further reach of the garden, the mind of the elder woman bitterly accused the younger. Delia's refusal to join the militant forces in London, at this most critical and desperate time, on what seemed to Gertrude the trumpery excuse of Weston's illness, had made an indelible impression on a fanatical temper. If she had cared--if she had _really_ cared--she could not have done any such thing. "What have I been wasting my time here for?" she asked herself; and reviewing the motives which had induced her to accept Delia's proposal that they should live together, she accused herself sharply of a contemptible lack of judgment and foresight.