not encourage
him to come. She would never dine out with him again. If he came he must
come as an ordinary caller at the ordinary caller's hour.

Seymour Portman called on her in the late afternoon of the day when
she wrote to Craven. Just before his arrival she was feeling peculiarly
blank and almost confusedly dull. She had gone through so much recently,
had lived at such high tension, had suffered such intense nervous
excitement, in the restaurant of the _Bella Napoli_ and afterwards, that
both body and mind refused to function quite normally. Long ago she had
stayed at St. Moritz in the depth of the winter, and had got up each
morning to greet the fierce blue sky, the blazing sun, the white glare
of the enveloping snows with a strange feeling of light, yet depressed,
detachment. She began to have a similar feeling now. Far down she was
horribly sad. But her surface seemed to say, "Nothing matters, because
I am in an abnormal condition, and while I remain in this condition
nothing can really matter to me." Surface and depths were in
contradiction, yet she was not even fully aware of that. A numbness held
her, and yet she was nervous.

She heard the drawing-room door open and Murgatroyd's voice make the
familiar announcement; she saw Seymour's upright, soldierly figure come
into the room; she smiled a greeting to her old friend; and the sound
of Murgatroyd's voice, the sight of Seymour coming towards her, her own
response to sound and sight, did not conquer the sensation of numbness.

"Yes, he is here. He does not forget me. He loves me and will always
love me. But what does it matter?"

A voice seemed to be saying that within her. Recently she had suffered
acutely; she had made a great effort; she had conquered herself and been
conquered by another. And it had all been just too much for her. She
was, she thought, like one who had fought desperately lying in deadly
silence and calm on the deserted battlefield, utterly passive because
utterly tired out.

But Seymour did not know that. He knew nothing of all that had happened,
and Beryl knew everything. And she thought of a picture called "Love
locked out." It was hardly fair that Seymour should know so little. And
while he was quietly talking to her, telling her little bits of news
which he thought would interest her, letting her in by proxy as it were
to the life of the great world which she had abandoned but in which
he still played a part, she was thinking, "I