Nona sat on the south terrace in the sun. The Cedarledge experiment had lasted eight days now, and she had to own that it had turned out better than she would have thought possible. Lita was giving them wonderfully little trouble. After the first flight to Greenwich she had shown no desire for cabarets and night-clubs, but had plunged into the alternative excitement of violent outdoor sports; relapsing, after hours of hard exercise, into a dreamy lassitude unruffled by outward events. She never spoke of her husband, and Nona did not know if Jim's frequent--too frequent--letters, were answered, or even read. Lita smiled vaguely when he was mentioned, and merely remarked, when her mother-in-law once risked an allusion to the future: "I thought we were here to be cured of plans." And Pauline effaced her blunder with a smile. Nona herself felt more and more like one of the trench-watchers pictured in the war-time papers. There she sat in the darkness on her narrow perch, her eyes glued to the observation-slit which looked out over seeming emptiness. She had often wondered what those men thought about during the endless hours of watching, the days and weeks when nothing happened, when no faintest shadow of a skulking enemy crossed their span of no-man's land. What kept them from falling asleep, or from losing themselves in waking dreams, and failing to give warning when the attack impended? She could imagine a man led out to be shot in the Flanders mud because, at such a moment, he had believed himself to be dozing on a daisy bank at home... Since her talk with Aggie Heuston a sort of _curare_ had entered into her veins. She was sharply aware of everything that was going on about her, but she felt unable to rouse herself. Even if anything that mattered ever did happen again, she questioned if she would be able to shake off the weight of her indifference. Was it really ten days now since that talk with Aggie? And had everything of which she had then been warned fulfilled itself without her lifting a finger? She dimly remembered having acted in what seemed a mood of heroic self-denial; now she felt only as if she had been numb. What was the use of fine motives if, once the ardour fallen, even they left one in the lurch? She thought: "I feel like the oldest person in the world, and yet with the longest life ahead of me ..." and a shiver of loneliness ran over her.