She gave herself a shake. She told herself she was taking this thing badly; that she ought not, just because it was an unusual situation, be so ready to condemn it. Was she really only a conventional spinster, shrinking back shocked at a touch of naked naturalness? Wasn't there much in what that short-haired child was so passionately saying about the rightness, the saneness, of reaction from horror? Wasn't it nature's own protection against too much death? After all, what was the good of doubling horror, of being so much horrified at the horrible that you stayed rooted there and couldn't move, and became, with your starting eyes and bristling hair, a horror yourself? Better, of course, to pass on, as Lucy was explaining, to get on with one's business, which wasn't death but life. Still--there were the decencies. However desolate one would be in retirement, however much one would suffer, there was a period, Miss Entwhistle felt, during which the bereaved withdrew. Instinctively. The really bereaved _would_ want to withdraw---- 'Ah, but don't you _see_,' Lucy once more tried despairingly to explain, 'this wasn't just being bereaved--this was something simply too awful. Of course Everard would have behaved in the ordinary way if it had been an ordinary death.' 'So that the more terrible one's sorrow the more cheerfully one goes out to tea,' said Miss Entwhistle, the remembrance of the light trousers at one end of Wemyss and the unmistakably satisfied face at the other being for a moment too much for her. 'Oh,' almost moaned Lucy at that, and her head drooped in a sudden fatigue. Miss Entwhistle got up quickly and put her arms round her. 'Forgive me,' she said. 'That was just stupid and cruel. I think I'm hide-bound. I think I've probably got into a rut. Help me out of it, Lucy. You shall teach me to take heroic views----' And she kissed her hot face tenderly, holding it close to her own. 'But if I could only make you _see_,' said Lucy, clinging to her, tears in her voice. 'But I do see that you love him very much,' said Miss Entwhistle gently, again very tenderly kissing her. That afternoon when Wemyss appeared at five o'clock, it being his bi-weekly day for calling, he found Lucy alone. 'Why, where----? How-----?' he asked, peeping round the drawing-room as though Miss Entwhistle must be lurking behind a chair. 'I've told,' said Lucy, who looked tired. Then he clasped her with a great hug to his heart. 'Everard's own little love,' he said, kissing and kissing her. 'Everard's own good little love.' 'Yes, but----' began Lucy faintly. She was, however, so much muffled and engulfed that her voice didn't get through. 'Now wasn't I right?' he said triumphantly, holding her tight. 'Isn't this as it should be? Just you and me, and nobody to watch or interfere?' 'Yes, but----' began Lucy again.