The Pawnbroker’s daughter was with them in the room, cheering them. The gay young man had found out somehow through her that “goodness and truth” were the heart of his life. She had not told him. It was he who had found it out. He had found the words and she did not want him to say them. But it was a new life for them both, a new life for him and happiness for her even if he did not come back, if she could forget the words. Putting out the candle at her bedside suddenly and quietly with the match-box to avoid the dreadful puff that would tell her mother of night, Miriam lay down. The extinguished light splintered in the darkness before her eyes. The room seemed suddenly hot. Her limbs ached, her nerves blazed with fatigue. She had never felt this kind of tiredness before. She lay still in the darkness with open eyes. Mrs. Henderson was breathing quietly as if in a heavy sleep. She was not asleep but she was trying to sleep. Miriam lay watching the pawnbroker’s daughter in the little room at the back of the shop, in the shop, back again in the little room, coming and going. There was a shining on her face and on her hair. Miriam watched until she fell asleep. 7 She dreamed she was in the small music-room in the old Putney school, hovering invisible. Lilla was practising alone at the piano. Sounds of the girls playing rounders came up from the garden. Lilla was sitting in her brown merino dress, her black curls shut down like a little cowl over her head and neck. Her bent profile was stern and manly, her eyes and her bare white forehead manly and unconscious. Her lissome brown hands played steadily and vigorously. Miriam listened incredulous at the certainty with which she played out her sadness and her belief. It shocked her that Lilla should know so deeply and express her lonely knowledge so ardently. Her gold-flecked brown eyes that commonly laughed at everything, except the problem of free-will, and refused questions, had as much sorrow and certainty as she had herself. She and Lilla were one person, the same person. Deep down in everyone was sorrow and certainty. A faint resentment filled her. She turned away to go down into the garden. The scene slid into the large music-room. It was full of seated forms. Lilla was at the piano, her foot on the low pedal, her hands raised for a crashing chord. They came down, collapsing faintly on a blur of wrong notes. Miriam rejoiced in her heart. What a fiend I am ... what a fiend, she murmured, her heart hammering condemnation. Someone was sighing harshly; to be heard; in the darkness; not far off; fully conscious she glanced at the blind. It was dark. The moon was not round. It was about midnight. Her face and eyes felt thick with sleep. The air was rich with sleep. Her body was heavy with a richness of sleep and fatigue. In a moment she could be gone again.... “Shall I get the beef-tea, mother?” ... she heard herself say in a thin wideawake voice.