'Well, when we met all of you last winter, we didn't know the difference--or didn't care, anyhow. We thought it was funny; and it was, rather--Mrs. Venables, you know, and being s-studied, and--and all that----' Laughter flickered again to the sad eyes, but died swiftly. 'And then, after some time, we got to understand.' The stammering monotone was expressionless and hard. 'And ... well, that's all.... We've both of us rather minded.... I have been angry, I suppose, about some things; but that's all done now.... And now we've kind of come to see that the old things are no good any more--all spoilt, anyhow for now--and we've got to go and look for new things, and perhaps we shan't find them; but anyhow no one else can help.' 'I am sorry,' said Prudence Varley, after a moment, being able to offer, it seemed, no help but that. Her eyes asked forgiveness, because, having helped to break, she could have no share in the mending. She knew it was true that 'we can help each other, and no one else in the world can help us.' To her sorrow, Betty returned, 'We've got each other, you know,' and even smiled a little. They had so nearly lost that possession. Prudence got up, and stood close to the small figure on the chair-arm, her hands clasped behind her. She was not demonstrative; where some people might kiss, she merely stood and spoke. 'You've thought, I dare say,' she said gently, 'that I've been standing on a pedestal and looking down--a horrid prig. Well, I suppose I have been a prig; I am made so, and I am sorry. But--please believe this--I haven't been on a pedestal; I've only been shut in between walls. Oh, you know as well as I do that we each have walls all round us, and it's not easy to knock them down; they shut us in.... But sometimes gaps come in them, so that we can see through--see the landscape outside, and all the other roads running. I suppose, perhaps, there have come lately gaps in all our walls. Anyhow, I should like to thank you for the gaps in mine. I hope very much they will not get bricked up again.... Being shut into dark, narrow paths prevents one from seeing anything outside--the daylight and all the other roads. But of course when a gap is made, one looks out through it. And looking out means looking up.' She paused a moment, and added softly, looking over the dark head out of the window: 'I think, you know, we're all trying to make what amends we can by looking up now, if we ever looked at all down. I hope you entirely believe that; and I hope you'll remember it, and not too much hate us, when you think about us at all.' The silence that followed was broken by a sudden sob. The dark head was bowed; Betty broke down utterly into crying for the second time that day. Her tears shook her; she could say no word. A hand was on the bowed shoulder. 'Don't--oh, don't' The sobs died at last chokingly away to long, shaken breaths.