Sallie and Martyn Ambrey both went away from home on the day following that of the inquest. One could feel in both of these young and yet highly evolved people the strong, instinctive resistance with which they opposed the possible effect of tragedy upon themselves. They were afraid of being made to feel emotion, and yet they were afraid, too, of finding themselves out to be incapable of emotion. They hurried away from Cross Loman. In a little while, I imagine that the whole thing will have become purely objective to both of them, a story to be told, something entirely outside themselves. Claire, with her powers of imagination, suffered vicariously, but as usual she mixed it all up with her own private and peculiar grievances. Several times she asked why Bill, who was young and had all life before him should have been taken, while she herself, for whom life held nothing, and who was infinitely weary, should have been left? There is, of course, no answer to that kind of questions. I never quite understand why people ask them. Lady Annabel Bending, who would certainly get out of her pony cart and walk up the mildest slope in order to spare her fat pony, made, on the whole, the most brutal comment of any that I heard made, in her gentle, relentless voice. She said: “I suppose that woman is satisfied, now that she’s succeeded in causing the death of a young and talented man, after mixing him up in a vulgar scandal and doing her best to ruin him, body and soul, and bringing her husband to disgrace. I suppose she’s satisfied.” She said this to me, but Mary Ambrey was in the room. She looked at Lady Annabel with her straight-gazing dark eyes. “However much Mrs. Harter may be responsible for--and, after all, she wasn’t the only person concerned in the affair--it’s she who’s been left to face the music,” said Mary. “As for being satisfied, Lady Annabel, it’s a figure of speech in any case, I suppose, but it doesn’t apply to Mrs. Harter. If she’d broken every Commandment there is, she’d be paying for it now--over and over again.” Lady Annabel did not look pleased. No doubt there was an obscure connection in her mind between the Ten Commandments and the Rector’s official position. “My words were, of course, not meant to be taken literally,” she said. “Probably Mrs. Harter is shocked at what has happened, now, as we are all apt to be shocked by consequences when they are sufficiently serious and unexpected. But I must say I have very little pity for a woman who deliberately sets out to wreck the life of a man younger than herself.” Mary turned rather white, but she had the courage to say: “Bill Patch was a free agent. Apart from everything else, we ought to remember that he was a free agent. It’s she who’s left to pay the penalty, but it isn’t fair that she should bear the blame for both.” And then Claire said, “_De mortuis nil nisi bonum_.”