If only Dudley had cared for her? From his vantage-ground of the looker-on, with his unnaturally sharpened sensitiveness, he knew perfectly how matters stood and how hopeless the desire seemed. Dear old Dudley, his life-long friend, would probably marry Doris and learn his mistake too late; and Ethel, with her fine nature, would go to some one else. Well, one could not change either one’s own little circle of fate, or the universe, just to suit oneself; one could only hope for the best, while there was still room for hope, and cultivate that soldier-spirit, undaunted even in a losing fight. In the meantime there was the lonely, unwanted spinster opposite, with her immediate claim of nearness and loneness; and, as if to direct her thoughts into another channel, he said: “You know, chum, I believe G was quite serious about wanting to come in here sometimes. Why not find out which afternoons she comes home early, and let her come and get tea and have it with me here. Then Doris need not worry about getting back in time.” “But if you are feeling weak it will tire you so, Basil, to have a stranger. You will feel obliged to talk to her.” “No, I don’t think I shall; and it would be nice to feel she was rather glad not to be a blank after all. Let her come one afternoon and try. Perhaps one way of grappling with the problem of human suffering—the best way—is to try and alleviate the atom of pain that is nearest each one of us.” She assented to please him, and then kissed his forehead with a lingering, adoring tenderness, marvelling that such a sufferer could so think for others. Then she went quietly to bed, feeling, as the gaunt spinster had tried to put it, “If _you_ can bear your ills so, surely I might manage to bear mine more courageously.” CHAPTER XIX The next evening Ethel crossed the little landing to the lonely flat, and gave the invitation from F to G. A good deal to her amusement, she found the gaunt spinster knitting babies’ socks, with a basket containing several completed pairs beside her. She picked a pair up, and said with a kind little smile: “I hardly expected to find you doing this.” “Of course not,” in a short way, that sounded uncivil without being so. “It’s an occupation about as much suited to me as teaching music.” “I wonder why you do it?”