As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept the invading darkness from her door. Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with them. Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton, no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him. He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in Thurston Square. Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay.