“Just that is so strange. All the time I’ve known her I’ve thought of her in the past tense. Her moods, her ways, her actions, were finished things to me—chapters of the _Life_. I _wrote_ her all the time. But now, when she _is_ mine, as it were, now that she exists only in my notes and papers and remembrance of her, now it comes that I’m shaken. I can’t think of her as a subject any more. I shall be wanting her—herself. I can’t think clearly. It’s frightening me, the work there is ahead of me. Because I’ve got to do it without her. She’s lying dead down there in Surrey—now—at this minute. And there’s that man—and a child. One’s overwhelmed. It’s so cruel. The only creature who ever cared for me. Think of Madala, quite still, not answering, not lighting up when you speak to her, staring at the ceiling, staring at her own coffin-lid. In two days she’ll be under the ground. Do you ever think what that means—burial—the corruption—the——” “Stop it, Nita!” Miss Howe’s movement blotted out my cousin’s face. “Do you hear? I can’t stand it. Here—drink some coffee. Jasper! Say something!” I heard the coffee-cup dance in its saucer. There came Aunt Serle’s anxious quaver— “Anita! Nita! What’s the matter, my dear? What’s the matter with my daughter?” Nobody answered. She was like a tortoise as she poked her head from the hood of her chair. “Jenny!” she called cautiously. “Jenny!” I slipped across the room to her. “What’s it about, Jenny? Eh? Speak up, my dear! Not crying, is she? Temper, that’s it. Don’t say I said so.” “It’s all right, Auntie. She—they—it’s the bad news. It’s upset them all.” “Bad news? Fiddlesticks! Temper, I call it. Why shouldn’t the girl get married? Not much money, but a pleasant fellow. Time for her to settle. I said to her—‘My dear, you follow your heart.’ But Nita tried to stop it. Nita couldn’t get over it. Cried. Temper. That’s it. Look at her now. ’Sh! Don’t let her see you.” But Anita wasn’t looking at me and she wasn’t crying. I suppose Great-aunt must have known what she was talking about; but it wasn’t easy to imagine my cousin soft and red-eyed like that great, good-natured Miss Howe. Her little sharp face looked as controlled as if it were carved. Yet, as she said herself, she was shaken. That showed in the jerkiness of her movements, the sharpening of her voice, in the break-up of her accustomed flow of words into staccato, like a river that has come to some rocks: and her hands had a clock-work, incessant movement, clutch-clutch, fingers on palm, that her eyes repeated. They were everywhere at once, resting, flitting, settling again, yet seeing nothing, I think, while she listened to Mr. Flood and grew more irritated with every word. “Why bad news?” said Great-aunt in my ear. “It’s a son, isn’t it?” I hesitated.