At the bedside Elsie knelt down for a few seconds with her face hidden in her hands, as she had always done, muttered an unthinking formula, and got into bed. “You’re very sociable, I must say,” Geraldine exclaimed. “Out half the night, and not a word to say when you do come up!” “I thought you had a headache.” “A lot you care about my headache.” “I’m going to put the light out now.” “All right.” They had always shared a bedroom and never exchanged formal good-nights. In the dark, a tremendous weariness suddenly came over Elsie. She felt thankful to be in her warm, narrow bed, and blissfully relived the evening’s experience. She found that she could thrill profoundly to the memory of those ardent moments, and even the bodily lassitude that overwhelmed her held a certain luxuriousness. Dimly, and without any conscious analysis, she felt that for the first time in her sixteen years of life she had glimpsed a reason why she should exist. It was for _this_ that she had been made. No thought of the future preoccupied her for a moment. She did not even regret that Norman Roberts should be going away next day. “I must get up in good time to-morrow, and get a word with him in the drawing-room before he’s off,” was her last waking thought. But she was sleeping profoundly, her head under the bedclothes, when Mrs. Palmer’s customary bang at the door sounded next morning soon after six o’clock. “Wake up, girls.” “Awright!” Geraldine shouted back sleepily. If one or other of them did not call out in reply, Mrs. Palmer would come into the room in her grey dressing-gown and vigorously shake the bed-posts of either bed. They could hear her heelless slippers flapping away again, and Elsie reluctantly roused herself. “I simply must clear that supper-table before mother goes down,” she thought. Still half asleep, and yawning without restraint, she put on her thick coat over her nightgown, and ran downstairs with bare feet. The broken remains of supper, even to Elsie’s indifferent eyes, looked horrible in the grim morning light. She huddled everything out on a tray, pushed it out of sight in the back kitchen, and ran upstairs again, her teeth chattering with cold. The still warm, tumbled bed was irresistible, and tearing off her coat, Elsie buried herself in it once more. She slept through Geraldine’s sketchy, scrambled toilet and muttered abuse of her sister’s laziness, and did not stir even when her senior, as the most unpleasant thing she could do, opened her window, which had been closed all night, and let in the damp, raw, foggy morning air. Elsie did not stir again until the door was flung open and Geraldine pulled the bedclothes off her roughly, and said angrily: “Get up, you lazy little brute! I had to wash all the beastly things you left over last night, and mother and I had to do the breakfasts, and see that young Roberts off and everything.” “Has Roberts gone?” “Yes, of course he has. It’s past nine, you lazy pig, you----”