"Oh, I _am_ glad you've come. Really, you know, I hate to make a fuss, but I'm not feeling at all meself. I'm just a tiddley-bit ill, it's my belief. Sylvia, give me your hand. Sylvia, I'm joking. I really am remarkably ill. Oh, there's no doubt I'm going to die. What a beautiful evening! Yes, it's not to be supposed I'm going to live forever, and there, after all, I'm not sorry. As soon as I began to get that stiffness I thought it meant I was not meself. And what's the good of hanging about if you're not yourself?" The nurse came forward and begged her not to talk too much. "You can't stop me talking. There was a clergyman came through Mrs. Ewings's getting in a state about me, and he talked till I was sick and tired of the sound of his voice. Talked away, he did, about the death of Our Lord and being nailed to the cross. It made me very dismal. 'Here, when did all this occur?' I asked. 'Nineteen hundred and ten years ago,' he said. 'Oh well,' I said, 'it all occurred such a long time ago and it's all so sad, let's hope it never occurred at all.'" The nurse said firmly that if Mrs. Gainsborough would not stop talking she should have to make Sylvia go out of the room. "There's a tyrant," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Well, just sit by me quietly and hold my hand." The sun set behind the housetops. Mrs. Gainsborough's hand was cold when twilight came. Sylvia felt that it was out of the question to stay longer at Mulberry Cottage, though Miss Dashwood, to whom the little property reverted, was very anxious for her to do so. After the funeral Sylvia joined Olive and Jack in Warwickshire. They realized that she was feeling very deeply the death of Mrs. Gainsborough, and were anxious that she should arrange to live with them in West Kensington. Sylvia, however, said that she wished to remain friends with them, and declined the proposal. "Do you remember what I told you once," she said to Jack, "about going back to the stage in some form or another when I was tired of things?" Jack, who had not yet renounced his ambition for Sylvia's theatrical career, jumped at the opportunity of finding her an engagement, and when they all went back to London with the babies he rushed about the Strand to see what was going. Sylvia moved all her things from Mulberry Cottage to the Airdales' house, refusing once more Miss Dashwood's almost tearful offer to make over the cottage to her. She was sorry to withstand the old lady, who was very frail by now, but she knew that if she accepted, it would mean more dreaming about writing books and gambling at Curzon Street, and ultimately doing nothing until it was too late. "I'm reaching the boring idle thirties. I'm twenty-seven," she told Jack and Olive. "I must sow a few more wild oats before my face is plowed with wrinkles to receive the respectable seeds of a flourishing old age. By the way, as demon-godmother I've placed one thousand pounds to the credit of Rose and Sylvius."