. It always means waiting some little time till there's a vacancy."

She said all this in an even, querulous tone, as though she were
recounting the injustices of fate, which had to be borne as part of the
natural order of things. Philip did not answer. He knew what she told him
well enough.

"You said partly," he observed at last.

"Well, Harry says you've been a brick to both of us. You've been a real
good friend to him, he says, and you've done for me what p'raps no other
man would have done. We must do the straight thing, he says. And he said
what you said about him, that he's fickle by nature, he's not like you,
and I should be a fool to throw you away for him. He won't last and you
will, he says so himself."

"D'you WANT to come away with me?" asked Philip.

"I don't mind."

He looked at her, and the corners of his mouth turned down in an
expression of misery. He had triumphed indeed, and he was going to have
his way. He gave a little laugh of derision at his own humiliation. She
looked at him quickly, but did not speak.

"I've looked forward with all my soul to going away with you, and I
thought at last, after all that wretchedness, I was going to be happy..."

He did not finish what he was going to say. And then on a sudden, without
warning, Mildred broke into a storm of tears. She was sitting in the chair
in which Norah had sat and wept, and like her she hid her face on the back
of it, towards the side where there was a little bump formed by the
sagging in the middle, where the head had rested.

"I'm not lucky with women," thought Philip.

Her thin body was shaken with sobs. Philip had never seen a woman cry with
such an utter abandonment. It was horribly painful, and his heart was
torn. Without realising what he did, he went up to her and put his arms
round her; she did not resist, but in her wretchedness surrendered herself
to his comforting. He whispered to her little words of solace. He scarcely
knew what he was saying, he bent over her and kissed her repeatedly.

"Are you awfully unhappy?" he said at last.

"I wish I was dead," she moaned. "I wish I'd died when the baby come."

Her hat was in her way, and Philip took it off for her. He placed her head
more comfortably in the chair, and then he went and sat down at the table
and looked at her.

"It is awful, love, isn't it?" he said. "Fancy anyone wanting to be in
love."

Presently the violence of her sobbing diminished and she sat in the c