time he passed the open door on to
the verandah he could see the two Annas standing motionless on its edge,
their up-turned faces, as they gazed at the stars, white in the
moonlight and very serious. Pathetic children. Pathetic, solitary, alien
children. What were they thinking of? He wouldn't mind betting it was
their mother.

Mr. Twist's heart gave a kind of tug at him. His sentimental, maternal
side heaved to the top. A great impulse to hurry out and put his arms
round them seized him, but he frowned and overcame it. He didn't want to
go soft now. Nor was this the moment, his nicely brought up soul told
him, his soul still echoing with the voice of Clark, to put his arms
round them--this, the very first occasion on which Mrs. Bilton had left
them alone with him. Whether it would become proper on the very second
occasion was one of those questions that would instantly have suggested
itself to the Annas themselves, but didn't occur to Mr. Twist. He merely
went on to think of another reason against it, which was the chance of
Mrs. Bilton's looking out of her window just as he did it. She might, he
felt, easily misjudge the situation, and the situation, he felt, was
difficult enough already. So he restrained himself; and the Annas
continued to consider infinite space and to perceive, again with that
feeling of dank and unsatisfactory consolation, that nothing really
mattered.

Next day immediately after breakfast Mrs. Bilton followed him into his
office and gave notice. She called it formally tendering her
resignation. She said that all her life she had been an upholder of
straight dealing, as much in herself towards others as in others towards
herself--

"Mrs. Bilton--" interrupted Mr. Twist, only it didn't interrupt.

She had also all her life been intensely patriotic, and Mr. Twist, she
feared, didn't look at patriotism with quite her single eye--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

As her eye saw it, patriotism was among other things a determination to
resist the encroachments of foreigners--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

She had no wish to judge him, but she had still less wish to be mixed up
with foreigners, and foreigners for her at that moment meant Germans--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

She regretted, but psychically she would never be able to flourish in a
soil so largely composed, as the soil of The Open Arms appeared to be,
of that nationality--

"Mrs. Bilton--"

And though it was none of her business, still she must say it did seem