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own will. She had done something base in wishing to create it. Then she tried to put it all out of her mind. She never prayed to see Richard again.

Yes, I'm terribly tired, thought Lily. I'm absolutely worn out. I must stop worrying so much. I've got nothing to worry about now. This idea was as painful to her as the others. Her eyes blurred again. Is this all my share of life, she thought? Gone? Twelve years of happiness; paid for more than twelve times over in agonies of waiting during those awful months, expecting always the War Office telegram which came at last. Killed in Action. Lily was standing in front of the looking-glass.

Her lips trembled; she was frog-faced, half smiling. Somebody knocked at the door. She sighed deeply. Her face drew down at the mouth and eyes. She looked five years older.

"Come in," she sighed aloud.

She picked up her hat from the dressing-table and put it on, arranging the little veil. The hat made her eyes look extraordinarily lost and tragic. She could still occasionally feel the pathos of the sight of herself in black—a small restrained figure beside which always stood, in her imagination, the charming fresh image of a girl in spreading cream skirts and a large hat with flowers, puffy-sleeved; herself as a young mother. The knocking, discreetly insistent, was repeated. Lily frowned and called sharply: "Come in."

"Master's just gone down to the carriage, Mrs. Richard. He told me to tell you to be sure and hurry, because it's getting late."

Mrs. Beddoes smiled with the privileged irony of an old servant.

Lily said: "I've been ready for the last half-hour," and she too smiled—a smile, as she sud­denly felt—catching a glimpse of it in the mirror— of the most extraordinary pathos and sweetness. She saw the effect of the quick sad smile together with her slightly inflamed eyes on Mrs. Beddoes, who stood aside for her to pass with a certain added quality of respect. Respect for her grief. For the ordeal her feelings were about to undergo. Poor Mrs. Richard.

Lily passed quickly down the gloomy corridor on light footsteps, her cloak about her. A shaft of sun­shine full of teeming motes struck down across the staircase from the small high mullioned window. The staircase creaked even under her weight. The heavy baluster-heads of carved oak fruit were nearly black with age. She paused for a moment, half way down, and stood, as she often did, taking in the silence and age of the house. The huge and faded piece of tapestry clothing the wall above her. The cheese-coloured ovals of faces painted upon wood three hundred years ago. The clock's tick like a man walking in armour. And as Lily stood there, she could feel so wonderfully calm and happy that it was like a kind of hope growing up

inside her. She thought: No. I shall never forget him, never. I shall never forget our life together. I shall never forget how happy we were. Nobody can take that away from me. And after all, Lily thought, I shall be brave. It's quite easy. I shall be able to be brave and smile and be wonderfully sympathetic to every one, simply because nobody knows what my life with Richard has been. How marvellously happy we've been together. As long as nobody knows that and as long as I never forget what my life used to be like, I shall be quite contented. I shall be brave and I shall be safe, because nothing can possibly happen which will touch me again. Lily came down two more steps and now she was standing in the sunshine. She was standing there with her face lit pure gold, like an angel, when Eric came running up the stairs to fetch her. He was pale and breathless. She seemed to dazzle him.

"M-mm," he blurted at her, with his painfully uncouth stammer.

"Darling, you must remember to count before you speak. You're getting worse than ever."

"I'm s-s-sorry."

He stood before her, so uncouth, looking more than his height with his shambling limbs and clothes just slightly too small. Lily hated the bother of buying clothes and Eric never seemed to have any ideas of his own except negatives ones. Most boys of seventeen were so particular. Maurice had

looked quite grown up when last she had seen him in his best. And it isn't as if I couldn't afford it, thought Lily. I really don't know how Mary manages.

"Because I'm perfectly certain, my darling, that you could cure yourself if you'd only fight against it. You mustn't just lose heart. Every­thing can be cured."

As she said this, stretching out her gloved hands to straighten his tie, her face was radiant. It seemed to her that by uttering these words she was con­firming for herself the truth of what she had just been feeling. She looked tenderly into her son's eyes, through the lenses of his powerful spectacles. He had preferred steel ones to the much more becoming sort with horn rims when they bought a new pair last spring. She sometimes wondered whether he didn't take a perverse pride in looking as plain as he could. Smoothing his hair, she asked, smiling:

"Can't you really make it lie down better than that?"

He flushed, and she saw, with a strange sense of irritation, that she had made him feel ashamed of himself.

"I did t-try, Mums."

"Darling." She laughed gently, kissed him. "We mustn't keep Grandad waiting."

They went down, her arm beneath his, into the hall. Outside, in the frame of the porch, the garden

looked brilliant. The carriage was standing at the door, and John Vernon's back, hoisted between Kent and Mrs. Potts, filled the whole space be­tween the box and the seat as he paused in the act of mounting. They might have been handling a very large grey tweed sack, chock full, with its neck tied up in a white woollen muffler and a homburg hat perched on the top. Kent puffed, Mrs. Potts strained, they made a final effort. And the old gentleman, lifted by main force into the victoria, slewed round and sank heavily upon his seat. The springs of the carriage gave visibly on the far side. John Vernon's pink and attractive face, with its silver moustache and slobbery mouth like a baby's, was smiling with pleasure and amuse­ment at his own helplessness and weight, at the trouble he had caused and at having got once more safely into position for the chief adventure of his day, his drive. His soft white freckled hand held a half-smoked cigar dangerously near his opened coat front and his broad waistcoat, covered with those little food-stains which were Mrs. Potts' despair; as fast as petrol could take them out, more were made. Mrs. Potts advanced, anxious about the cigar. She signed to Kent, who, understanding what was wrong, contrived, in tucking the rug round his master's lap, to prop up the hand which field the cigar away from the flap of the overcoat. At once Mrs. Potts was all smiles with relief, and now Mrs. Beddoes, coming out of the house

behind Lily, joined her. Lily got into the carriage, kissing Papa good morning as she did so. She took her place beside him and Eric sat opposite. He was wearing his black school clothes and a bowler. They were all in black except John. Mrs. Beddoes had been sure the master would catch cold if he wore his top-hat. She and Mrs. Potts, grey-haired women in aprons, stood watching their master as the carriage drove out into the park. They came out after it to close the garden gates.

They both admire him tremendously, Lily thought. And with pride she reflected that her father-in-law had a dignity all his own. A dignity so intrinsic, so little dependent on outer appear­ances, that it could be appreciated by these two women who, for the last five years, since his slight stroke, had washed and dressed their master, performing the most menial offices for him, like nursemaids. There he sat, as the victoria bowled along the drive, across the bare stretch of the little park, broken only by clumps of bushes and small ponds, along the avenue of oaks, beeches and ash-trees, with his wide happy smile of contented ownership, looking at nothing, the cigar beginning to singe the fringe of the rug. He smiled as she moved it a little, smiling. She felt his hand to make sure that it wasn't cold. He gave a grunt.