she overlooked the fact that if she had been told she
could not have borne the knowledge. It would have poisoned for her every
day of the eight hundred and forty-five days for which in her ignorance
she had been so happy.

She did not attempt to deny that she had been happy. But what she had
_said_ to Ranny when he told her was, "It's a mercy your poor father
doesn't know."

And in that moment she thought of her happiness with a sharp pang as if
it had been unfaithfulness to her dead husband.

It was at half past seven on a Saturday evening in the last week of
September, nineteen-twelve, that Mrs. Randall sat alone in the back
sitting-room at Granville and meditated miserably on those things.

Upstairs in his bedroom overhead she could hear Ranny moving very
softly, for fear of waking Stanley. She knew what he was doing. He was
changing, making himself smart enough to take Winny Dymond to the Earl's
Court Exhibition.

* * * * *

Upstairs in his bedroom overhead, Ranny moved very softly, for fear of
waking Stanley. He was changing into a new gray suit, making himself
more smart than he had been for years to take Winny to the Earl's Court
Exhibition.

In that shirt, glistening, high-collared, in a gray-blue tie, in
gray-blue socks and brown boots, Ranny looked very smart indeed. And the
suit, the suit looked splendid, the fold down the legs of the trousers
being as yet unimpaired.

And Ranny looked young, ever so young still, though he was thirty-two.
The faint lines at the corner of his eyes and of his mouth accentuated
agreeably their upward tilt. He had gained distinction by the increasing
firmness of his face. Virile in its adolescence, it had kept its youth
in its maturity. Ranny's face expressed him. It was fine and clean; it
had not one mean or faltering line in it. And his figure had not, after
all, deteriorated. Flabbiness was as far from him as it had been in his
youth.

With infinite precautions, Ranny opened a drawer where he found a small
japanned tin box, very new. This he unlocked softly, and from a little
canvas bag that lay in the compartment specially reserved for it he took
a sovereign, one of four, that represented rather more than a week's
proportion of his new salary.

He had made up his mind that when the day came he would spend no less a
sum. So great a rise could not be celebrated on less. If a cashier of
Woolridge's could have been capable of saving, s