But meanwhile he said not a word that could have jarred on any conviction or grief of Delia's. Sometimes indeed they touched the great subject itself--the "movement" in its broad and arguable aspects; though it seemed to him that Delia could not bear it for long. Mind and heart were too sore; and her weary reasonableness made him long for the prophetic furies of the autumn. But always she felt herself enwrapped by a tenderness, a chivalry that never failed. Only between her and it--between her and him--as she lay awake through broken nights, some barrier rose--dark and impassable. She knew it for the barrier of her own unconquered fear. Chapter XIX On this same Sunday night before the date fixed for the Suffrage debate, a slender woman, in a veil and a waterproof, opened the gate of a small house in the Brixton Road. It was about nine o'clock in the evening. The pavements were wet with rain, and a gusty wind was shrieking through the smutty almond and alder trees along the road which had ventured to put out their poor blossoms and leaves in the teeth of this February gale. The woman stood and looked at the house after shutting the gate, as though uncertain whether she had found what she was looking for. But the number 453, on the dingy door, could be still made out by the light of the street opposite, and she mounted the steps. A slatternly maid opened the door, and on being asked whether Mrs. Marvell was at home, pointed curtly to a dimly lighted staircase, and disappeared. Gertrude Marvell groped her way upstairs. The house smelt repulsively of stale food, and gas mingled, and the wailing wind from outside seemed to pursue the visitor with its voice as she mounted. On the second floor landing, she knocked at the door of the front room. After an interval, some shuffling steps came to the door, and it was cautiously opened. "What's your business, please?" "It's me--Gertrude. Are you alone?" A sound of astonishment. The door was opened, and a woman appeared. Her untidy, brown hair, touched with grey, fell back from a handsome peevish face of an aquiline type. A delicate mouth, relaxed and bloodless, seemed to make a fretful appeal to the spectator, and the dark circles under the eyes shewed violet on a smooth and pallid skin. She was dressed in a faded tea-gown much betrimmed, covered up with a dingy white shawl. "Well, Gertrude--so you've come--at last!"--she said, after a moment, in a tone of resentment. "If you can put me up for the night--I can stay. I've brought no luggage." "That doesn't matter. There's a stretcher bed. Come in." Gertrude Marvell entered, and her mother closed the door. "Well, mother--how are you?" The daughter offered her cheek, which the elder woman kissed. Then Mrs. Marvell said bitterly-- "Well, I don't suppose, Gertrude, it much matters to you how I am."