For a long time nobody spoke. The wind came draughtily and in ever chillier gusts. Irene clasped her arms still tightlier over her breast; she shivered, she yawned with cold. Mrs. Aldwinkle felt the shaking of the young body that leaned against her knees. She herself was cold too; but after what she had said to Cardan and the others it was impossible for her to go indoors yet awhile. She felt, in consequence, annoyed with Irene for shivering. “Do stop,” she said crossly. “It’s only a stupid habit. Like a little dog that shivers even in front of the fire.” “All ve same,” said Lord Hovenden, coming to Irene’s defence, “it is getting raver cold.” “Well, if you find it so,” retorted Mrs. Aldwinkle, with overwhelming sarcasm, “you’d better go in and ask them to light a fire.” It was nearly midnight before Mrs. Aldwinkle finally gave the word to go indoors. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII To say good-night definitely and for the last time was a thing which Mrs. Aldwinkle found most horribly difficult. With those two fatal words she pronounced sentence of death on yet another day (on yet another, and the days were so few now, so agonisingly brief), she pronounced it also, temporarily at least, on herself. For, the formula once finally uttered, there was nothing for her to do but creep away out of the light and bury herself in the black unconsciousness of sleep. Six hours, eight hours would be stolen from her and never given back. And what marvellous things might not be happening while she was lying dead between the sheets! Extraordinary happinesses might present themselves and, finding her asleep and deaf to their calling, pass on. Or some one, perhaps, would be saying the one supremely important, revealing, apocalyptic thing that she had been waiting all her life to hear. “There!” she could imagine somebody winding up, “that’s the secret of the Universe. What a pity poor Lilian should have gone to bed. She would have loved to hear it.” Good-night—it was like parting with a shy lover who had not yet ventured to declare himself. A minute more and he would speak, would reveal himself the unique soul-mate. Good-night, and he would remain for ever merely diffident little Mr. Jones. Must she part with this day too, before it was transfigured?