"About my 'reputation '? You wouldn't like to think I didn't care about it.... Of course, I care frightfully. If I didn't, where's the risk?" "I hate your having to take it all. I don't risk anything." "I wish you did. Then you'd be happier. Poor Richard--so safe in his man's world.... You can be sorry about that, if you like. But not about me. I shall never be sorry. Nothing in this world can make me sorry.... I shouldn't like Mamma to know about it. But even Mamma couldn't make me sorry.... I've always been happy about the things that matter, the real things. I hate people who sneak and snivel about real things.... People who have doubts about God and don't like them and snivel. I had doubts about God once, and they made me so happy I could hardly bear it.... Mamma couldn't bear it making me happy. She wouldn't have minded half so much if I had been sorry and snivelled. She wouldn't mind so much if I was sorry and snivelled about this." "You _said_ you weren't going to think about your mother." "I'm not thinking about her. I'm thinking about how happy I have been and am and shall be." Even thinking about Mamma couldn't hurt you now. Nothing could hurt the happiness you shared with Richard. What it was now it would always be. Pure and remorseless. VII. Delicious, warm, shining day. She had her coat and hat on ready to go down with him. The hansom stood waiting in the street. They were looking up the place on the map, when the loud double knock came. "That's for Peters. He's always getting wires--" "If we don't go to-day we shall never go. We've only got five more now." The long, soft rapping on the door of the room. Knuckles rapping out their warning. "You can't say I don't give you time." Richard took the orange envelope. "It's for you, Mary." "Oh, Richard, '_Come at once. Mother ill.--DORSY_.'" She would catch the ten train. That was what the hansom was there for. "I'll send your things on after you." The driver and the slog-slogging horse knew that she would catch the train. Richard knew. He had the same look on his face that was there before when Mamma was ill. Sorrow that wasn't sorrow. And the same clear thought behind it. XXXIV I. Dorsey's nerves were in a shocking state. You could see she had been afraid all the time; from the first day when Mamma had kept on saying, "Has Mary come back?" Dorsy was sure that was how it began; but she couldn't tell you whether it was before or afterwards that she had forgotten the days of the week. Anybody could forget the days of the week. What frightened Dorsy was hearing her say suddenly, "Mary's _gone_." She said it to herself when she didn't know Dorsy was in the room. Then she had left off asking and wondering. For five days she hadn't said anything about you. Not anything at all. When she heard your name she stared at them with a queer, scared look.