ir cots and disposed of for the
night Mary turned to Gwenda.

"Come into my room a minute," she said.

Mary's joy was to take her sister into her room and watch her to see
if she would flinch before the signs of Steven's occupation. She drew
her attention to these if Gwenda seemed likely to miss any of them.

"We've had the beds turned," she said. "The light hurt Steven's eyes.
I can't say I like sleeping with my head out in the middle of the
room."

"Why don't you lie the other way then?"

"My dear, Steven wouldn't like that. Oh, what a mess my hair's in!"

She turned to the glass and smoothed her disordered waves and coils,
while she kept her eyes fixed on Gwenda's image there, appraising her
clothes, her slenderness and straightness, the set of her head on her
shoulders, the air that she kept up of almost insolent adolescence.
She noted the delicate lines on her forehead and at the corners of her
eyes; she saw that her small defiant face was still white and firm,
and that her eyes looked violet blue with the dark shadows under them.

Time was the only power that had been good to Gwenda.

"She ought to look more battered," Mary thought. "She _does_ carry it
off well. And she's only two years younger than I am.

"It's her figure, really, not her face. She's got more lines than I
have. But if I wore that long straight coat I should look awful in
it."

"It's all very well for you," she said. "You haven't had two
children."

"No. I haven't. But what's all very well?"

"The good looks you contrive to keep, my dear. Nobody would know you
were thirty-three."

"_I_ shouldn't, Molly, if you didn't remind me every time."

Mary flushed.

"You'll say next that's why you don't come."

"Why--I--don't come?"

"Yes. It's ages since you've been here."

That was always Mary's cry.

"I haven't much time, Molly, for coming on the off-chance."

"The off chance! As if I'd never asked you! You can go to Alice."

"Poor Ally wouldn't have anybody to show the baby to if I didn't. You
haven't seen one of Ally's babies."

"I can't, Gwenda. I must think of the children. I can't let them grow
up with little Greatorexes. There are three of them, aren't there?"

"Didn't you know there's been another?"

"Steven _did_ tell me. She had rather a bad time, hadn't she?"

"She had. Molly--it wouldn't do you any harm now to go and see her.
I think it's horrid of you not to. It's such rotten humbug. Why, you
used to say _I_ w