at's verra kind of you, but the money may as well lie by," she told
him wisely, "for I couldn't go wearing a green necklace when I'm in
mourning."

"But you won't be in mourning much longer."

"Six months in full mourning, six months half. That's as it should be
for a mother."

"But what nonsense!" he exclaimed irascibly. "When you're a young little
thing you ought to be wearing pretty clothes. It doesn't do your mother
any good, your going about in black."

"I know well it doesn't, but, remember, mother was old-fashioned Scotch,
and she was most particular about having things just so. Specially on
melancholy occasions. I remember she was most pernickety about her
blacks after my father's death. And though she's entered into eternal
life, we've no guarantee that that makes a body sensible all at once."
She saw on his face an expression which reminded her that he had been
careful never to acquiesce when she spoke of the possibility of a future
life, and she cried out: "You needn't look so clever. I'm sure she's
going on somewhere, and why you should grudge it to the poor woman I
don't know. And your mother thinks there's something after death, too.
She told me this morning in the garden that she was quite certain of it
when your father died. She said that all the trees round the house
seemed to know where he had gone."

"Oh, she said that, did she?" His arms released her. He stared into her
face. "She said that, did she?" he repeated in an absent, faintly
malevolent murmur; and clasped her in his arms again and kissed her so
cruelly that her lips began to bleed.

"Let me go, let me go!" she cried. "You're not loving me, you're just
taking exercise on me!"

He let her go, but not, she knew from the smile on his face, from any
kindness, but rather that he might better observe her distress and gloat
over it. She moved away from the heat of the fire and from that other
heat which had so strangely been engendered by these contacts which
always before engendered light, and went to the window and laid her
forehead against the cold glass. The day had changed and lost its smile,
for the sky was hidden by a dirty quilt of rain-charged clouds and the
frost had seeped into the marshes and left them dark, acid winter green,
yet she longed to walk out there in that unsunned and water-logged
country, opening her coat to the cold wind brought by the grey, invading
tides, making little cold pools where she dug her heels into the