‘Darling, I’ve left you my copper bowl. You always said it had nice lights in it. If I go to Italy I’ll send you a crate of oranges for it. It looks its best with oranges. It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever had, so of course it’s for you. Take it and don’t forget me.’ She lay back looking white and tired. ‘Oh, Jennifer----’ Judith clutched her hand and was speechless. After a while she added: ‘I shall feel I haven’t quite lost you. Your lovely bowl. It’s always seemed such a part of you.’ ‘It’s all of me,’ whispered Jennifer. ‘I leave it to you.’ The momentary lightness was now past, vanishing as swiftly as it had come. There was now such a sense of approaching desolation as had never been before in life. This was the end. ‘Then I must say good-bye,’ said Judith. ‘Draw back the curtain.’ Judith obeyed. As she went to the window she felt Jennifer’s eyes upon her. The night was frosty, dark and still, and the midnight stars glittered in trembling cold multitudes over the arch of the sky. Below the window the unmoving trees made a blot of yet profounder darkness. Across the court, the opposite wing of the building was just distinguishable, a mass impenetrably deep; but there were no lights in the windows: not even in Mabel’s. Everybody in College was asleep. ‘Oh!’ sighed Jennifer. ‘The smell of the limes, and the nightingales! I’d like to have had them once again.’ Judith let the curtain drop and came quickly and sank on her knees by the bed. ‘Then come back, Jennifer, and have them with me. Why not, why not? You’ll be well by next term. Everything will be forgotten. Our last term ... Jennifer!’ ‘No!’ she covered her face with her hands. ‘No, Judith, I could never come back here. Everything’s gone all wrong. Everything’s as if--as if it had been poisoned. I must go away and get it straight. Listen.’ She put both arms around Judith’s neck and held her in a hard painful embrace. ‘The things I meant to say,--I don’t think I can say them. I thought I could before I saw you, but now you’re here it doesn’t seem clear any more. I don’t really know what I think--what I mean, and if I tried to explain you might--might not understand. Oh, Judith!’ She began to cry, and stopped herself. ‘There are things in life you’ve no idea about. I can’t explain. You’re such a baby really, aren’t you? I always think of you as the most innocent thing in the world.’ ‘Jennifer, you know you can tell me anything.’ Yet she knew, while she pleaded, that she shrank from knowing. ‘Oh yes, it’s true, you understand everything.’ Jennifer tightened her arms desperately and seemed to be hesitating, then said at last: ‘No, I’m in a muddle. I’m afraid. I should explain all wrong, as I always do. But I’ll write to you, darling. I may not write to you for some time: or it may be to-morrow. But I swear I’ll write. And then I’ll explain everything.’ ‘And we’ll see each other again, Jennifer? We’ll meet often?’