“How ridiculous! I shall go out to-morrow with the hope of meeting him to contradict it. Now, I like St Armand--he is the only man who has treated me the same, princess or beggar maid. If he was rude to me, it was the rudeness of equality; and his politeness had no sticky condescension in it. I wonder how the High Priest is getting on? I’ve learnt a tremendous lot this last two months, Alice. The only thing I need now to become a fully-fledged woman is practical experience--experience and inches.” “Will you be ordering a wreath for Timothy?” asked Alice later, as she ate the tea that Marigold could scarcely touch. “No.” And then, in a different tone, after some minutes had elapsed: “Alice, I’m very ill--in mind and spirit--not in body--and I can’t think properly at all. I used to love Timothy--I loved him more this morning than ever I had done, and now, and now I can’t do. It is the thought of that--that last time. He could lie there without a tear--without a word, and see me trampled on and hurt. I know it’s reasonless. You’ll say that he was dead. It’s the strange power of the doctor’s words, I think. For, even in those last few days he would repeat them--almost hypnotically: ‘I’ll come for you and take you away, Timothy’--‘I’ll come for you and take you away.’ And he did come, and--I--I was left behind. But that’s not the worst. I can’t explain to you the worst--it was so--so unexpected. And I daren’t sleep in that bedroom next to his to-night. I dare not--for I have always prayed for him at night--night and morning--and to-night I cannot. He has gone away, and he doesn’t want my prayers. And I can’t think at all, I can only feel. So I’ll come and sleep with you. You won’t mind for one night? I’ll be better to-morrow. For lately I haven’t slept well at all of nights. I have felt so ill and weak. And every night just after midnight I awake with such a terrible feeling of fear--as if something were drawing all the life out of me, and leaving nothing but a paralysed skeleton behind. And, and--I think I’m like Timothy. If you will only put your arm around me whilst we sleep, I think I shall feel safer.” And then suddenly she buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Alice! Alice!” she cried; “if only he would have loved me, how I would have loved him!” And then as suddenly she got up, a certain stiffness in her movements, as if she suffered from some cramping pain. “I’ll wash the tea things. I want something to do. You write the letter and get a boy to take it to the post. I don’t want you to go out again. Thank Heaven we go to-morrow! This little cottage stifles me. It has been a nightmare, and I thought it was to be a novel holiday.” And that night, when everything was silent, St Armand took his usual midnight stroll, calling upon his neighbours. And when he came to that sad room where Marigold and Alice slept, he stared with much surprise and some amusement.