Probably that would be never. * * * * * Disgrace closed round her, stifling. “It’s _us_--we’re doomed,” she thought, feeling the stigma of her family in her flesh. “If I go on after this, holding up my head, I shall be a liar and a cheat. It will show in my face and in my walk, always.” She bowed her head. “I want to live,” murmured something. “I want to live, even if I slink through life. I will. I don’t care inside. I shall always have myself to be with.” * * * * * Something that was not touched, that sang far away down inside the gloom, that cared nothing for the creditors and could get away down and down into the twilight far away from the everlasting accusations of humanity.... The disgrace sat only in the muscles of her face, in her muscles, the stuff of her that had defied and fought and been laughed at and beaten. It would not get deeper. Deeper down was something cool and fresh--endless--an endless garden. In happiness it came up and made everything in the world into a garden. Sorrow blotted it over, but it was always there, waiting and looking on. It had looked on in Germany and had loved the music and the words and the happiness of the German girls and at Banbury Park, giving her no peace until she got away. * * * * * And now it had come to the surface and was with her all the time. Away in the distance filling in the horizon was the home life. Beyond the horizon, gone away for ever into some outer darkness were her old ideas of trouble, disease and death. Once they had been always quite near at hand, always ready to strike, laying cold hands on everything. They would return, but they would be changed. No need to fear them any more. She had seen them change. And when at last they came back, when there was nothing else left in front of her they would still be changing. “Get along, old ghosts,” she said, and they seemed friendly and smiling. Her father and mother, whose failure and death she had foreseen as a child with sudden bitter tears, were going on now step by step towards these ghostly things in the small bright lamplit villa in Gunnersbury. She had watched them there during the winter months before she came to Newlands. They had some secret together and did not feel the darkness. Their eyes were careless and bright. Startled, she had heard them laugh together as they talked in their room. Often their eyes were preoccupied, as if they were looking at a picture. She had laughed aloud at the thought whenever there had been any excuse, and they had always looked at her when she laughed her loud laugh. Had they understood? Did they know that it was themselves laughing in her? Families ought to laugh together whenever there was any excuse. She felt that her own grown-up laughter was the end of all the dreadful years. And three weeks ahead were the two weddings.