Catty brought in the lamp. When she turned up the wick the rising flame carved Mamma's face out of the dusk. Her pretty face, delicately dinted, whitened with a powdery down; stained with faint bistres of age. Her little, high-bridged nose stood up from the softness, clear and young, firm as ivory. The globed light showed like a ball of fire, hung out in the garden, on the black, glassy darkness, behind the pane. Catty drew down the blind and went. You heard the click of the latch falling to behind her. The evening had begun. They took up their books. Mamma hid her face behind Anthony Trollope, Mary hers behind Thomas Hardy. Presently she would hear Mamma sigh, then yawn. Horrible tension. Under the edge of her book she would see Anthony Trollope lying in Mamma's lap and Mamma's fingers playing with the fringe of her shawl. She would put Thomas Hardy down and take up Anthony Trollope and read aloud till Mamma's head began bowing in a doze. Then she would take up Thomas Hardy. When Mamma waked Hardy would go down under Trollope; when she dozed he would come to the top again. After supper Mamma would be wide awake. She would sit straight up in her chair, waiting, motionless, ready. You would pick up your book but you would have no heart in it. You knew what she wanted. She knew that you knew. You could go on trying to read if you chose; but she would still sit there, waiting. You would know what she was thinking of. The green box in the cabinet drawer. The green box. You began to think of it, too, hidden, hidden in the cabinet drawer. You were disturbed by the thought of the green box, of the little figures inside it, white and green. You would get up and go to the cabinet drawer. Mamma would put out her hands on the table, ready. She smiled with shut lips, pouting, half ashamed, half delighted. You would set out the green and white chequer board, the rows of pawns. And the game of halma would begin. White figures leap-frogging over green, green over white. Your hand and your eyes playing, your brain hanging inert, remembering, forgetting. In the pauses of the game you waited; for the clock to strike ten, for Catty to bring in the Bible and the Prayer-book, for the evening to end. Old verses, old unfinished verses, coming and going. In the long pauses of the game, when Mamma sat stone-still, hypnotised by the green and white chequers, her curved hand lifted, holding her pawn, her head quivering with indecision. _In dreams He has made you wise With the wisdom of silence and prayer...._ Coming and going, between the leap-frogging of the green figures and the white. _God, Who has blinded your eyes With the dusk of your hair...._ Brown hair, sleek and thin, brown hair that wouldn't go grey. And the evening would go on, soundless and calm, with soft, annihilating feet, with the soft, cruel feet of oblivion. III.