But Mrs. Harcourt did not know how nimbly she could move, might think it strange when presently her voice must betray that she was already rejoicing—defying the note of warning that sounded far away within her—in a well-known presence, singing recklessly to it the song of new joy and life begun anew that all the way from England had been gathering within her. The announcement of her own name made the woman again a stranger, so much was she a stranger to the life belonging to the name, and brought into sudden prominence the state of her gown, exposed now in its full length. She recounted the tragedy and saw Mrs. Harcourt’s smile change to real concern. Here they were, alone together, seeming to have leapt rather than passed through the early stages. Like love, but unobstructed. A balance of side-by-side, not of opposition. More open than love, yet as hidden and wonderful; rising from the same depth. “Hold it in front of the waydiator. Vat’ll take ’em out a bit. Such a poo’hy gown.” She moved a little back from the row of pipes. Going close to the radiator Miriam moved into a fathomless gentleness. But it was also a demand, so powerful that it was drawing all her being to a point. All that she had brought with her into the room would be absorbed and scattered, leaving her robbed of things not yet fully her own. The warning voice within was crying aloud now, urging her not only to escape before the treasures of arrival and of strangeness were lost beyond recovery, but to save also the past, disappeared round the corner yet not out of sight but drawn closely together in the distance, a swiftly moving adventure, lit from point to point by the light in which to-day she had bathed forgetful. Even a little talk, a little answering of questions, would falsify the past. Set in her own and in this woman’s mind in a mould of verbal summarisings it would hamper and stain the brightness of to-morrow. She found herself hardening, seeking generalisations that would cool and alienate, and was besieged by memories of women whom she had thus escaped. And of their swift revenge. But this woman was not of those who avenge themselves. Hesitating before the sound of her own voice, or the other which would sound if this second’s silence were prolonged, she was seized by revolt: the determination at all costs to avoid hearing in advance, in idle words above the ceaseless intercourse of their spirits, about Oberland; even from one whose seeing might leave her own untouched. To open the way for flight she remarked that it must be late. “About nine. You’re dead beat, I can see. Ought to go to bed.” “Not for worlds,” said Miriam involuntarily. Mrs. Harcourt’s face, immediately alight for speech, expressed as she once more took possession of the radiator and looked down at it as into a fire, willingness to stand indefinitely by. “Everyone’s gone to bed. Bein’ out all day in vis air makes you sleepy at night.”