For the moment Eve was incredulous as she bent over the bed, for her mother’s face looked so fresh and tranquil. Then the truth came to her, and she stood there, shocked and inarticulate, trying to realise what had happened. Sudden and poignant memories rose up and stung her. She remembered that she had almost despised the little old lady who lay there so quietly, and now, in death, she saw her as the child, a pathetic creature who had never escaped from a futile childishness, who had never known the greater anguish and the greater joys of those whose souls drink of the deep waters. A great pity swept Eve away, a choking compassion, an inarticulate remorse. She was conscious of sudden loneliness. All the memories of long ago, evoked by the dead face, rose up and wounded her. She knelt down, hid her face against the pillow, uttering in her heart that most human cry of “Mother.” Canterton was strangely restless that morning. Up at six, he wandered about the gardens and nurseries, and Lavender, who came to him about some special work that had to be done in one of the glasshouses, found him absent and vague. The life of the day seemed in abeyance, remaining poised at yesterday, when the moon hung over the black ridge of the fir woods by Orchards Corner. Daylight had come, but Canterton was still in the moonlight, sitting in that chair on the dew-wet grass, dreaming, to be startled again by Eve’s sudden presence. He wondered what she had thought, whether she had suspected that he had been imagining her his wife, Orchards Corner their home, and he, the man, sitting there in the moonlight, while the woman he loved let down her dark hair before the mirror in their room. If Lavender could not wake James Canterton, breakfast and Gertrude Canterton did. There were half a dozen of Gertrude’s friends staying in the house, serious women who had travelled with batches of pamphlets and earnest-minded magazines, and who could talk sociology even at breakfast. Canterton came in early and found Gertrude scribbling letters at the bureau in the window. None of her friends were down yet, and a maid was lighting the spirit lamps under the egg-boiler and the chafing dishes. “Oh, James!” “Yes.” She was sitting in a glare of light, and Canterton was struck by the thinness of her neck, and the way her chin poked forward. She had done her hair in a hurry, and it looked streaky and meagre, and the colour of wet sand. And this sunny morning the physical repulsion she inspired in him came as a shock to his finer nature. It might be ungenerous, and even shameful, but he could not help considering her utter lack of feminine delicacy, and the hard, gaunt outlines of her face and figure. “I want you to take Mrs. Grigg Batsby round the nurseries this morning. She is such an enthusiast.” “I’ll see what time I have.”