And Mrs. Corrie had sat deep in her large chair, dead and drowned. Dead because of something she had never known. Dead in ignorance and living bravely on--her sweet thin voice rising above the gloom where she lay hid--a gloom where there were no thoughts. Nearly all women were like that, living in a gloom where there were no thoughts. If anyone could persuade her that she was alive she would do nothing but rush about and dance and sing ... how irritating that would be ... making men smile and trot about and look silly ... no room for ideas; except in smoking-rooms--and--laboratories.... She was a good woman; a God woman; the sweetness of her bones and her thin sweet voice of tears and laughter were of God. Everyone knew that and worshipped her. Men’s ideas were devilish; clever and mean.... Was God a woman? Was God really irritating? No one could endure God really.... Men could not.... Women were of God in some way. That is what men could never forgive; the superiority of women.... “Perhaps I can’t stand women because I’m a sort of horrid man.” Mrs. Kronen was a sort of man too. She was not perplexed. But she was a woman too--because she was not mean and petty and fussy as men are ... sitting tall and square at the piano with the square tall form of her husband standing ready to turn the pages--her strong baritone voice rolling out, “Ai-me-moi ... car ton charme-est étrange ... et-je-t’ai-me.” 17 Recalling the song as she sat back in the alcove of her bed motionless, keeping the brightness of her room at its first intensity, Miriam remembered that it had brought her a moment when the flower-filled drawing-room had seemed to be lit, from within herself, a sudden light that had kept her very still and made the bowls of roses blaze with deepening colours. In her mind she had seen garden beyond garden of roses, sunlit, brighter and brighter and had made a rapturous prayer. She remembered the words ... God.... I’m not afraid of you. Look at the gardens ... and something had smiled through the lit gardens exultantly, and Mrs. Kronen’s voice had raged through the room like a storm, “Ai-me-moi!...” and Mr. Corrie’s eyes were strange and hard with shadows.... He knew, in some strange way men knew there were gardens everywhere, not always visible. Women did not seem to know.... The letter on her tray was a sort of response to her prayer. CHAPTER V 1