That same night Eric told me that he had sent to London for a heart-specialist. And the heart-specialist had answered he would be down on Thursday, which was the day after to-morrow. I saw in Eric's face that he was anxious at the delay. He admitted that he was "afraid" to wait. Yes, he would wire for another man. Eric--"afraid"! "You don't," I whispered, "you don't mean ... quite soon?" He repeated that he was "afraid." Then I felt I knew all that any specialist could tell me. * * * * * That was the day I came to know the steadying influence of a call to face great issues. They bring their own greatness with them. They wrap it round our littleness. Only afterwards, thinking how gentle and watchful Eric looked in telling me, I remembered that people were supposed to faint when they heard news like that. For myself I had never felt so clear-headed. Never felt the responsibility of life so great. Never felt that for us to fail in bearing our share was so unthinkable. If this Majesty of Death were soon to clothe my mother, her children must not hide and weep. They must help her, help each other to meet the Great King at the gate. All the little troubles fell away. I was kind again to Betty. I called my lover "Eric." He called me by my name. Just that. No more passed between him and me. But I felt I had taken this man and that he had taken this woman "for better or worse." CHAPTER XXI AUNT JOSEPHINE'S LETTER Bettina came into the room and handed me a letter. "Mrs. Harborough!"--my mother drew herself up on the pillow with an animation I had not thought to see again. I opened and read: "My dear niece----" "Ah!" my mother brought out the ejaculation with an effect of having doubted if the relationship would be owned. That introductory phrase turned out to be the most comprehensible part of the first half of Aunt Josephine's letter. As for me, I was completely floored by "the Dynamism of Mind," after I had stumbled over a cryptic reference to my mother's state--"which you must not expect me to call sickness. There is no such thing. There is only harmony or unharmony, whether of the so-called body or the soul." On the third page, the writer descended from these Alpine heights, to say that it had been "inspirationally borne in upon" her that the time was come for her brother's daughters to widen their horizon, and incidentally, to see something of their father's world. The implied slur upon our mother's world was, to my surprise, not resented. "Go on. Go on." The letter ended by saying that, in spite of very grave and urgent preoccupations, Aunt Josephine would endeavour to draw a little of the old life round her, if her nieces would come and stay with her in Lowndes Square for a few weeks. "A London season!" Bettina cried. I looked up from the letter and saw my mother watching with hungry delight Bettina's face of rapture. Bettina had not looked like that since the Helmstones went away.