She moved her head very slightly, from side to side. "But there was more than that. There was more than that. What was it?" She leaned her ear as if to listen, her eyes very large and fixed. "Yes, there _was_ the war, and the awfulness of our disappointment in it, too, after all. There was the counsel of despair about everything, the pressure on us all to think that all efforts to be more than base are delusions. We were so terribly fooled with our idealistic hopes about the war . . . who knows but that we are being fooled again when we try for the higher planes of life? Perhaps those people are right who say that to grab for the pleasures of the senses is the best . . . those are _real_ pleasures, at least. Who knows if there is anything else?" Something like a little, far-away tolling said to her, "There was something else. There was something else." This time she knew what it was. "Yes, there was that other aspect of the loss of physical youth, when you think that the pleasures of the senses are perhaps all there are. There was the inevitable despairing wonder if I had begun to have out of my youth all it could have given, whether . . ." There tolled in her ear, "Something else, something else there." But now she would not look, put her hands over her eyes, and stood in the dark, fighting hard lest a ray of light should show her what might be there. A voice sounded beside her. Toucle was saying, "Have you got one of your headaches? The mail carrier just went by. Here are the letters." She took down her hands, and opened her eyes. She felt that something important hung on there being a letter from Neale. She snatched at the handful of envelopes and sorted them over, her fingers trembling. Yes, there it was, the plain stamped envelope with Neale's firm regular handwriting. She felt as though she were a diver whose lungs had almost collapsed, who was being drawn with heavenly swiftness up to the surface of the water. She tore open the envelope and read, "Dearest Marise." It was as though she had heard his voice. She drew in a great audible breath and began to read. What a relief it was to feel herself all one person, not two or three, probing hatefully into each other! * * * * * But there was something she had not done, some teasing, unimportant thing, she ought to finish before going on with the letter. She looked up vacantly, half-absently, wondering what it was. Her eyes fell on Toucle. Toucle was looking at her, Toucle who so seldom looked at anything. She felt a momentary confusion as though surprised by another person in a room she had thought empty. And after that, uneasiness. She did not want Toucle to go on looking at her. "Mark hasn't had his breakfast yet," she said to the old Indian woman. "Won't you take him downstairs, please, and give him a dish of porridge for me?" CHAPTER IX "The Gent Around the Lady and The Lady Round the Gent" _An Evening in the Life of Mr. Vincent Marsh_