“I’d like to have gone down there once,” said Miss Howe. “If I’d known—heigh-ho!” “I—I wished I hadn’t gone,” said Anita slowly. “It wasn’t a success.” “The husband, I suppose,” the Baxter girl hinted delicately. “No, I hardly saw him. It was Madala herself. Changed. Affectionate—she was always that to me but——I remember sitting with her once. We had been talking, about Aphra Behn I believe, and she had grown flushed and had begun to stammer a little. You know her way?” “I know.” The Baxter girl leaned forward eagerly. “And she was tracing a parallel between the development of the novel and the growth of the woman’s movement—her old vein. Brilliant, she was. And all at once she stopped and began staring in front of her. You know that trick she had of frowning out her thoughts. I was careful not to interrupt. I knew something big was coming. She could be—prophetic, sometimes. At last she said in a worried sort of way—‘I’ve a dreadful feeling that we’re out of coffee and it’s early closing.’ No, I’m not exaggerating—her very words. And then some long rigmarole about Carey’s appetite, and that if she made the coffee black strong she could persuade him to take more milk with it. Oh—pitiful! And in a moment she’d dashed off on a three mile walk to the next village where there was a grocer that did open on Wednesdays. Oh, it was most pathetic. It made me realize the effect that he was having on her—stultifying! I always did dislike him.” “Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Howe.