“I only mean—it was romantic, meeting like that so long ago and nobody knowing a word until just before they were married, except you, Miss Serle. And I don’t believe you guessed?” She questioned her with defiant eyebrows. “How could I guess what never happened? ‘In love!’ I suppose it deceived some good folks.” “It wasn’t so long ago,” Miss Howe soothered them. She had a funny little way of slipping people into another subject if she thought that they sounded quarrelsome. ‘Let’s be comfortable!’ was written all over her. And yet she could scratch. I think that a great many women are like Miss Howe. “Long ago? Of course not!” Anita picked it up at once. “How long is it? A year? Eighteen months? April, wasn’t it? She wrote _The Resting-place_ in the next three months. Scamped. I shall always say so. She was three years over _Ploughed Fields_. Yes, April began it. _The Resting-place_ was out for the Christmas sales. She married him at Easter. And now it’s November. The year’s not gone. But Madala Grey is gone.” “Where?” said the Baxter girl intensely. “Don’t!” said Miss Howe. But the Baxter girl looked as if she couldn’t stop herself. “We—we put her into the past tense—d’you notice how easily we’re doing it already?—but—is she less alive to you, less lovable, less Madala Grey to you, because of a telegram and a funeral service? is she?” “No,” said Miss Howe. “If you put it like that—no.” “Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “When you put it like that—yes.” “She must be somewhere,” argued the Baxter girl. “She can’t just stop.” “Why not?” said Mr. Flood, with his bored smile. “She can’t. I feel it,” she said with her hand at her heart and her large eyes on him. “I don’t,” he said to her, and he lost his smile. “‘Dust to dust——’” The woman behind him moved restlessly. “Jasper, _dear_! How trite!” “But the spirit?” said the Baxter girl, “the spirit?” Nobody answered. The little blue flames on the hearth capered and said ‘Chik-chik!’ Anita shivered. “The room’s getting cold,” she said sharply. And then—“Jenny, is that door open? There’s such a draught.” I got up and went to see. But the door was shut. When I came back they were talking again. Anita was answering the Baxter girl. “Yes, I stayed there once. A pretty place. The sort of place she would choose. All roses. No conveniences. And what with the surgery and the socialism, the poor seemed to be always with us. Only one servant——” “She _ought_ to have made money,” said Miss Howe. “Oh, the first two books were a _succès d’estime_, I wept over her contract. She did make a considerable amount of money on _The Resting-place_. But it was all put by for the child. She told me so. He, you know, a poor man’s doctor! She told me that too—flung it at me. She had an extravagant way of talking, manner more than anything, of course, but to hear her you would almost think she was proud of the life they led. She was always unpractical.”