About this time Judith brought her visit to a close, and Ishmael was
chiefly occupied with getting her off in safety and with as little
fatigue as might be. Each year now their parting held something of the
quality possessed by his yearly gamble with his crops, only in the
former case the chances against them were doubled, for it might be Judy
who failed to come again on the long journey from town.

She had a companion, a devoted creature but colourless, whom she could
be said rather to suffer gladly than enjoy, and her interests, were
divided between the little slum church she lived near in London, her
friends at Cloom, and the rare visits of Lissa, of whom she was very
fond, and who sometimes went and poured out to her enthusiasms about
Futurist paintings, which Judy, who had remained true to the early
Impressionist school, could only consider a perverse return to cave art.

"Shall I give your love to Lissa?" asked Judith as Ishmael tucked her
into the cosiest seat of Nicky's car, which was to take her to Penzance.
"No, I won't," she went on. "I shall tell her she's to come and give it
for herself. She is coming, I know, now she's got her International
picture off her mind. She's a very gifted woman, but I sometimes think
it's a pity for her to fill her life with nothing but paint and
canvases. I'm old-fashioned, I suppose!"

"Lissa and I understand each other," said Ishmael. "She is the only
other human being beside myself I've ever met who finds the deepest joy
in things and places instead of people."

"Do you still? Not you; they've failed you for a long time now, I know,
and they'll fail Lissa. I wish I hadn't given her the advice I did when
she came to town."

"What was that?" asked Ishmael, stepping back as Nicky climbed into the
driver's seat.

"Never to trust a man or offend a woman. She's stuck to it too well.
I've got to the age when I think it's better to have trusted too much
than too little. Good-bye, my dear! Take care of yourself. I shan't come
again."

"What ..." began Ishmael; but at a sign from Judith Nicky had put in the
clutch and the car was sliding off down the drive. Ishmael turned and
went thoughtfully into the house. He wondered whether Judy too had
suffered from that same sense of a shattered atmosphere that he had
since the return of Archelaus.

It seemed absurd that he should, he told himself. He was seventy,
Archelaus older; it was surely time they found it possible to live
toget