Mrs. Otway shook her head. "No, I can't possibly get away before the afternoon. You see I must look after Mrs. Purlock. She got into rather bad trouble this morning. And oh, Miss Forsyth, I'm so _sorry_ for her! She believes her two boys are being starved to death in Germany. Unfortunately she knows that woman whose husband signed his letter 'Your loving Jack Starving.' It's thoroughly upset Mrs. Purlock, and if, as they all say, drink drowns thought and makes one feel happy, can we wonder at all the drinking that goes on just now? But I'm going to try to-morrow morning to arrange for her to go away to a sister--a very sensible, nice woman she seems, who certainly won't let her do anything of the sort." "Surely you're rather inconsistent?" said Miss Forsyth briskly. "You spoke only a minute ago as if you almost approved of drunkenness," but there was an intelligent twinkle in her eye. Mrs. Otway smiled, but it was a very sad smile. "You know quite well, dear Miss Forsyth, that I didn't mean _that_! Of course I don't approve, I only meant that--that I understand." She waited a moment, and then added, quietly, and with a little sigh, "So you see I can't go up to town to-morrow morning. What I want to do there will wait quite well till the afternoon." Miss Forsyth accompanied her visitor into the hall--the old eighteenth-century hall which was so exquisitely proportioned, but the walls of which were covered with the monstrously ugly mid-Victorian marble paper she much disliked, but never felt she could afford to change as long as it still looked so irritatingly "good" and clean. She opened the front door on to the empty, darkened street; and then, to Mrs. Otway's great surprise, she suddenly bent forward and kissed her warmly. "Well, my dear," she exclaimed, "I'm glad to have seen you even for a moment, and I hope your business, whatever it be, will be successful. I want to tell you something, here and now, which I've never said to you yet, long as we've known one another!" "Yes, Miss Forsyth?" Mrs. Otway looked up surprised--perhaps a little apprehensive as to what was coming. "I want to tell you, Mary, that to my mind you belong to the very small number of people, of my acquaintance at any rate, who shall see God." Mrs. Otway was startled and touched by the other's words, and yet, "I don't quite know what you mean?" she faltered--and she really didn't. "Don't you?" said Miss Forsyth drily. "Well, I think Mrs. Purlock, and a good many other unhappy women in Witanbury, could tell you." * * * * * Late in the next afternoon, after leaving the little luggage she had brought with her at the old-fashioned lodgings where she found that Miss Forsyth had made careful arrangements for her comfort, even to ordering what she should have for dinner, Mrs. Otway made her way, on foot, into Piccadilly, and thence into quiet Arlington Street.