"Lindley Vickers--Vickers Lindley." But she was not thinking of Lindley Vickers; she was thinking of Dan, trying to get back to Dan. "Is Jenny there? Tell her to go and see what Master Roddy's doing." She thought Catty was Jenny.... "Has Dan come in?" Sometimes it would be Papa; but not often; she soon left him for Dan and Roddy. Always Dan and Roddy. And never Mark. Never Mark and never Mary. Had she forgotten Mark or did she remember him too well? Or was she afraid to remember? Supposing there was a black hole in her mind where Mark's death was, and another black hole where Mary had been? Had she always held you together in her mind so that you went down together? Did she hold you together now, in some time and place safer than memory? She was still playing with the dressing-jacket. She smoothed it, and patted it, and folded it up and laid it beside her on the bed. She took up her pocket-handkerchief and shook it out and folded it and put it on the top of the dressing-jacket. "What are you doing, you darling?" "Going to bed." She looked at you with a half-happy, half-frightened smile, because you had found her out. She was putting out the baby clothes, ready. Serious and pleased and frightened. "Who will take care of my little children when I'm laid aside?" She knew what she was lying in the big bed for. X. It was really bedtime. She was sitting up in the armchair while Catty who was Jenny made her bed. The long white sheet lay smooth and flat on the high mattress; it hung down on the floor. Mamma was afraid of the white sheet. She wouldn't go back to bed. "There's a coffin on the bed. Somebody's died of cholera," she said. Cholera? That was what she thought Mark had died of. * * * * * She knows who I am now. XI. Richard had written to say he was married. On the twenty-fifth of February. That was just ten days after Mamma died. "We've known each other the best part of our lives. So you see it's a very sober middle-aged affair." He had married the woman who loved him when he was young. "A very sober middle-aged affair." Not what it would have been if you and he--He didn't want you to think that _that_ would ever happen again. He wanted you to see that with him and you it had been different, that you had loved him and lived with him in that other time he had made for you where you were always young. He had only made it for you. She, poor thing, would have to put up with other people's time, time that made them middle-aged, made them old. You had got to write and tell him you were glad. You had got to tell him Mamma died ten days ago. And he would say to himself, "If I'd waited another ten days--" There was nothing he could say to you. That was why he didn't write again. There was nothing to say. XXXV I. She would never get used to the house.