Nan did not hear him. One of the laborers had looked up. For a moment his eyes were black, shining into hers. O, but he can't really see me from down there. The face was lean brown between curly black hair and an unshaven chin. With an eager child's smile he raised a hand. As the hand fell she had a glimpse of a dark chest scooped in taut muscles towards the belly under his open blue shirt. He was again a blue back bending and straightening with the three other backs. Crazy fires danced through her. "Yes, I had to go round to Gertrude Fagan's to wash." There was a dead veil between her and Fanshaw. "And how is the fiery Gertrude?" "Very well." "The last time I met that lady on the street she cut me dead ... I suppose she's too taken up with the world beyond to notice us terrestrial beings." "Nonsense, Fanshaw, Gertrude's an awfully nice person ... You must have done something she didn't like. She's very easily offended." "Do the spooks continue to flourish?" "You mean her automatic writing. Well, what of it? You shouldn't scoff at things you don't understand." "That's better than being awed by them, Nan." "Anything more I can do for you, Miss?" It was the Irish girl who came to clean. She stood in the shadow by the door with her hand at her sides. Pretty smiling lips. "No, nothing tonight, Marion. I'm sorry I kept you so late today." "That's all right. Good night, Miss." Nan smiled warmly at her through the dusk of the room. At the end of the hall the door shut sharply. "More tea, Fanshaw?" "No, thanks." While she poured a few drops of tea into her cup she glanced out the window again. Italians they were, probably, smelling of pipes and sweaty shirts and garlic. There's Marion. If I were Marion Reily instead of Nancibel Taylor ... to stroll along twilit streets with backward looks through the lashes; that boy'd rub the clay off his hands and follow me; kidding talk on park benches, fumbling work-rough hands, ditchdiggers' hands, hardmuscled arms crushing, moist hot lips bearing down, panting. The cold voice of Aunt M. when she was a little girl too excited at the circus: Careful, Nancibel, careful, Nancibel. "But, Fanshaw," she was saying, straining to keep the tumult out of her voice, "suppose there were a life after death." Fanshaw did not answer for a moment. She saw his eyes dusky grey, troubled. The straight line of his lips tightened. All this is me, smalltalk over teacups and polished hardwood floors and Fanshaw's drawling Harvardese. Marion's neat dark figure had gone off down the street with quick jerky steps. Nan looked back into the darkening room. "Is there any reason to believe," Fanshaw was saying in a tone that arrested all her attention suddenly, "that people in the next life would be any less futile than people in this life? It's horrible to want to do way with death." "How can you feel that way? It's all such fun," she said boisterously. So Fanshaw too ... She felt he was changing the subject.