hat 'we can help each other, and no one else in the world can help
us.'

To her sorrow, Betty returned, 'We've got each other, you know,' and
even smiled a little. They had so nearly lost that possession.

Prudence got up, and stood close to the small figure on the chair-arm,
her hands clasped behind her. She was not demonstrative; where some
people might kiss, she merely stood and spoke.

'You've thought, I dare say,' she said gently, 'that I've been standing
on a pedestal and looking down--a horrid prig. Well, I suppose I have
been a prig; I am made so, and I am sorry. But--please believe this--I
haven't been on a pedestal; I've only been shut in between walls. Oh,
you know as well as I do that we each have walls all round us, and it's
not easy to knock them down; they shut us in.... But sometimes gaps come
in them, so that we can see through--see the landscape outside, and all
the other roads running. I suppose, perhaps, there have come lately gaps
in all our walls. Anyhow, I should like to thank you for the gaps in
mine. I hope very much they will not get bricked up again.... Being shut
into dark, narrow paths prevents one from seeing anything outside--the
daylight and all the other roads. But of course when a gap is made, one
looks out through it. And looking out means looking up.' She paused a
moment, and added softly, looking over the dark head out of the window:
'I think, you know, we're all trying to make what amends we can by
looking up now, if we ever looked at all down. I hope you entirely
believe that; and I hope you'll remember it, and not too much hate us,
when you think about us at all.'

The silence that followed was broken by a sudden sob. The dark head was
bowed; Betty broke down utterly into crying for the second time that
day. Her tears shook her; she could say no word.

A hand was on the bowed shoulder.

'Don't--oh, don't'

The sobs died at last chokingly away to long, shaken breaths.

'Please go now,' said Betty. 'Thank you for--for everything, and for
saying that just now. And I don't know why I cried--only I'm so t-tired.
And you can't do anything more. And please go now, if you don't mind.'

'I suppose,' said Prudence, 'it's good-bye. We're leaving Naples next
week.... But sometime later we may meet again, all of us.... And
meanwhile, if there's anything we can do--ever----'

'Only leave us your address, please. We'll send what we borrowed; we've
not got it just now. And will you ple