ce by
itself. Frances thought: "He didn't want any of us to touch his things."

Then she saw Veronica's name on the sealed envelope. She was glad when
Veronica left them and went to her hospital.

And when she was gone she wanted her back again.

"I wish I hadn't spoken that way to Veronica," she said.

"She won't mind. She knows you couldn't help it."

"I could, Dorothy, if I wasn't jealous of her. I mean I'm jealous of her
certainty. If I had it, too, I shouldn't be jealous."

"She wants you to have it. She's trying to give it you.

"Mother--how do we know she isn't right? Nicky said she was. And Michael
said Nicky was right.

"If it had been only Nicky--_he_ might have got it from Veronica. But
Michael never got things from anybody. And you _do_ know things in queer
ways. Even I do. At least I did once--when I was in prison. I knew
something tremendous was going to happen. I saw it, or felt it, or
something. I won't swear I knew it was the War. I don't suppose I did.
But I knew Frank was all mixed up with it. And it was the most awfully
real thing. You couldn't go back on it, or get behind it. It was as if
I'd seen that he and Lawrence and Nicky and Michael and all of them
would die in it to save the whole world. Like Christ, only that they
really _did_ die and the whole world _was_ saved. There was nothing
futile about it."

"Well--?"

"Well, _they_ might see their real thing the same way--in a flash.
Aren't they a thousand times more likely to know than we are? What right
have we--sitting here safe--to say it isn't when they say it is?"

"But--if there's anything in it--why can't I see it as well as you and
Veronica? After all, I'm their mother."

"Perhaps that's why it takes you longer, Mummy. You think of their
bodies more than we do, because they were part of your body. Their
souls, or whatever it is, aren't as real to you just at first."

"I see," said Frances, bitterly. "You've only got to be a mother, and
give your children your flesh and blood, to be sure of their souls going
from you and somebody else getting them."

"That's the price you pay for being mothers."

"Was Frank's soul ever more real to _you_, Dorothy?"

"Yes. It was once--for just one minute. The night he went away. That's
another queer thing that happened."

"It didn't satisfy you, darling, did it?"

"Of course it didn't satisfy me. I want more and more of it. Not just
flashes."

"You say it's the price we pay for being