Often after Dudley had been, and some little act or glance or word had seemed to emphasise the barrier between them, her yearning over Basil had broken down her courage. When she had lost them both, what would become of her then? was the question that utterley undid her, finding no reply beyond a sense of empty darkness. She told herself she would go right away to another land—to some far colony—where she could begin life afresh, with her haunting memories kept in the background. She would not stay to see the awakening come to Dudley, if Doris were his wife, nor struggle through the long months at the General Post Office, when the end of each day’s labour brought no welcoming smile from Basil. She would not settle down alone in a dingy little flat as their opposite neighbour, to become a mere letter of the alphabet to God and man, surrounded by countless other cyphers of as little meaning and account. She would go away to some new, young land, with her vigour and her courage, and carve out a path with some semblance of reality and value. Only, could she ever get away from the awful emptiness that would come to her with the loss of Basil, and the utter lack of any incentive to carry on the unequal struggle? Basil laid his hand on her bowed head, and for a little while seemed unable to speak. Then he steadied his voice, and rallied her with his brave, whimsical thoughts. “Wouldn’t the dear old pater have enjoyed G? She’s just the kind of oddity he doted on. Fancy her teaching music of all things. It must be only scales and exercises. I think she’s splendid to see the incongruity herself, and refuse to call it music when she dare be honest. What a grotesque figurehead she looks, chum, doesn’t she? I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her.” But Ethel could not answer to his cheeriness just yet. “Basil, why are so many humans just mere letters of the alphabet in the general scheme?” She had slid into a sitting posture now, and leaned her head against his arm. “It doesn’t matter so much about the men; they can go out into the world and make friends by the way, and become something more if they wish; but what of the single women, who have to work for their living, and have nothing much to look forward to but a sort of terror as to what will become of them when they can work no more? If you could see some of them at the office, with that drawn, dried-up, joyless look, scraping and saving and starving for dread of the years ahead: it’s so unfair, so grossly, hideously, cruelly unfair.” “It perhaps won’t be when you see all round it, chum. It is so obvious we only see one side of things here. When we see the other side it will all look so different.”