Anita’s pale eye met and held her glance as if she resented that sympathy. Then, as if indeed she were suddenly grown weak, she acquiesced. “I suppose so. Yes, it’s the helplessness. ‘If this didn’t happen’—‘If that weren’t so’—Little things, little things—and they govern one. A broken doll—a cowslip ball—stronger than all my strength. And she needn’t have met Carey. It was just a chance. If I’d known—that day! I used to ask her questions, just to make her talk. I remember asking her about her old home—more to set her off than anything. I said I’d like to see it some day. It was true. I was interested. But it was only to make her talk. But she—oh, you know how she foamed up about a thing. ‘My old home! Would you, Anita? Would you like to come? Wouldn’t it bore you, Anita? It’s all spoiled, you know. But I go down now and then. Nobody remembers me. It’s like being a ghost. Oh, I _feel_ for ghosts. Would you really like to come? Shall we go soon? Shall we go today?’ And then, of course, down we go. And then we meet Carey. And then the play begins.” Miss Howe shook her head. “Ends.” Anita accepted it. “Ends. Then the play ends.” And then, frowning—“If I’d known that day—if I’d known! I was warned, too. That’s strange. I’ve never thought of it from that day to this. If I were an old wife now——” She shivered. “What happened?” said the Baxter girl curiously. “Oh, well, off we went! We had a carriage to ourselves. I was glad. I thought she might talk.” “And you always tried to make her talk,” said Miss Howe softly. Anita went on without answering her. “She grew quite excited as we travelled down, talking about her ‘youth.’ She always spoke as if she were a hundred.” “She put something into that youth of hers, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Miss Howe. “She did. The things she told me that day. I knew she had been in America, but I never dreamed——She landed there, if you please, without a penny in her pocket, without a friend in the world.” “I never understood why she went to America,” said Miss Howe. “I asked her once.” “What did she say?” said Anita curiously. “To make her fortune. But I never got any details out of her.” “Didn’t you know?” said Anita. “Her people emigrated. The father failed. It happened when Madala was eighteen, and she and her mother persuaded him, expecting him, literally, to make their fortunes. The mother seems to have been an erratic person. Irish, I believe. Beautiful. Extravagant. I have always imagined that it was her extravagance—but Madala and the husband seem to have adored her. I remember Madala saying once that her father had been born unlucky, ‘except when he married Mother!’ I suspect, myself, that that was the beginning of his ill-luck. Anyhow, when the crash came, they gathered together what they had and started off on some romantic notion of the mother’s to make their fortune farming. America. Steerage. The _Sylvania_.” “_Sylvania?_ That’s familiar. What was it? A collision, wasn’t it?”