hose whose lives are one long wrestling with fortune, she
muttered:

"I don't like to see anyone cry like that!"

And finding that the girl remained obstinately withdrawn from sight or
sympathy, she moved towards the door.

"Well," she said, with ironical compassion, "if you want me, I'll be in
the kitchen."

The little model remained lying on her bed. Every now and then she
gulped, like a child flung down on the grass apart from its comrades,
trying to swallow down its rage, trying to bury in the earth its little
black moment of despair. Slowly those gulps grew fewer, feebler, and at
last died away. She sat up, sweeping Hilary's bundle of notes, on which
she had been lying, to the floor.

At sight of that bundle she broke out afresh, flinging herself down
sideways with her cheek on the wet bolster; and, for some time after her
sobs had ceased again, still lay there. At last she rose and dragged
herself over to the looking-glass, scrutinising her streaked, discoloured
face, the stains in the cheeks, the swollen eyelids, the marks beneath
her eyes; and listlessly she tidied herself. Then, sitting down on the
brown tin trunk, she picked the bundle of notes off the floor. They gave
forth a dry peculiar crackle. Fifteen ten-pound notes--all Hilary's
travelling money. Her eyes opened wider and wider as she counted; and
tears, quite suddenly, rolled down on to those thin slips of paper.

Then slowly she undid her dress, and forced them down till they rested,
with nothing but her vest between them and the quivering warm flesh which
hid her heart.

CHAPTER XLI

THE HOUSE OF HARMONY

At half-past ten that evening Stephen walked up the stone-flagged pathway
of his brother's house.

"Can I see Mrs. Hilary?"

"Mr. Hilary went abroad this morning, sir, and Mrs. Hilary has not yet
come in."

"Will you give her this letter? No, I'll wait. I suppose I can wait for
her in the garden?"

"Oh yes, sit!"

"Very well."

"I'll leave the door open, sir, in case you want to come in."

Stephen walked across to the rustic bench and sat down. He stared
gloomily through the dusk at his patent-leather boots, and every now and
then he flicked his evening trousers with the letter. Across the dark
garden, where the boughs hung soft, unmoved by wind, the light from Mr.
Stone's open window flowed out in a pale river; moths, born of the sudden
heat, were fluttering up this river to its source.

Stephen looked irri