nd ice, worked up at length to:

'It's all very well, but I like your sort of people, if it _is_
different (like Warren said once, and mother says), a jolly sight better
than ours--so there!'

'It's all a q-question of taste, of course,' Betty said. 'And now I must
go; and as we aren't going to say good-bye, there's no more to be said.
I hope we shall all of us have a j-jolly summer.'

'Please say good-bye for me,' said Miranda tearfully, referring to
Tommy, who had a pedestal of his own. 'And I hope he'll soon be better,
and ... oh dear!'

So that parting was effected. It should, after all, count for something
that one's friends should weep to say good-bye.

Next day the Venables left Naples.

When she knew that they had gone, Betty seemed to lose suddenly the
strength she had summoned to her for resistance; she had no more need of
it; the long struggle was over. She shivered a little at that past
bitterness, and buried her face in her two hands. When she looked up
again, the past lay, as it were, slain; all the future waited.

The struggle, made so hard and bitter at the first, had at the last been
easy. Warren Venables had let it rest in the end, realizing bitterly at
last the ineffectualness of contest. Prudence had assisted him to that
realization.

'We can't do anything for them now; we're no good to them; we only hurt
them. We've got to leave them alone.'

It was strange to Warren to see how her eyes were wet.

'It's easy enough for you,' he said, his voice hard and level. 'You
don't know how much I care.'

She said, very gently, 'I do,' and then was silent for a moment,
thinking perhaps that what she did not know was rather how much she
herself might possibly have cared, had many things been wholly
different; had not the unconquerable 'there is nothing to say' finally
summed up the situation as far as her part in it went. But of those
vague might-have-beens Warren knew nothing.

Prudence said:

'I do know. And that's why you'll leave them alone--because you care.
For if you don't, you'll hurt them--horribly. Don't you see? We've hurt
them enough; this is the only amends possible--the only amends they will
take.'

'Amends!' His face was set like a flint, his way when he was hurt.
'That's just it. I've been a brute all along; and when I came to know
it, through _their_ coming to know it, and through my coming to care so
much, I wasn't allowed to make any amends. That's what I can't stand.'

(He