"You must sit down, then, till I go," said Fleda. "We must find a bench." "No. I'm tired of _them_: I'm not tired of you. This is the way for you to feel most how much I rest on you." Fleda had a compunction, wondering as they continued to stroll whether it was right after all to leave her. She believed, however, that if the flame might for the moment burn low, it was far from dying out; an impression presently confirmed by the way Mrs. Gereth went on: "But one's fatigue is nothing. The idea under which one worked kept one up. For you I _could_--I can still. Nothing will have mattered if _she's_ not there." There was a question that this imposed, but Fleda at first found no voice to utter it: it was the thing that, between them, since her arrival, had been so consciously and vividly unsaid. Finally she was able to breathe: "And if she _is_ there--if she's there already?" Mrs. Gereth's rejoinder too hung back; then when it came--from sad eyes as well as from lips barely moved--it was unexpectedly merciful. "It will be very hard." That was all, now; and it was poignantly simple. The train Fleda was to take had drawn up; the girl kissed her as if in farewell. Mrs. Gereth submitted, then after a little brought out: "If we _have_ lost--" "If we have lost?" Fleda repeated as she paused again. "You'll all the same come abroad with me?" "It will seem very strange to me if you want me. But whatever you ask, whatever you need, that I will always do." "I shall need your company," said Mrs. Gereth. Fleda wondered an instant if this were not practically a demand for penal submission--for a surrender that, in its complete humility, would be a long expiation. But there was none of the latent chill of the vindictive in the way Mrs. Gereth pursued: "We can always, as time goes on, talk of them together." "Of the old things?" Fleda had selected a third-class compartment: she stood a moment looking into it and at a fat woman with a basket who had already taken possession. "Always?" she said, turning again to her companion. "Never!" she exclaimed. She got into the carriage, and two men with bags and boxes immediately followed, blocking up door and window so long that when she was able to look out again Mrs. Gereth had gone. XX