ignant with death, as
if it were a living creature. She refused to relinquish her friends to
death. She would not submit to dark and nothingness. She began to pace
up and down, clenching her hands, and making no attempt to stop the
quick tears which raced down her cheeks. She sat still at last, but she
did not submit. She looked stubborn and strong when she had ceased to
cry.

In the next room, meanwhile, Wilfrid was talking to Mrs. Thornbury with
greater freedom now that his wife was not sitting there.

"That's the worst of these places," he said. "People will behave as
though they were in England, and they're not. I've no doubt myself that
Miss Vinrace caught the infection up at the villa itself. She probably
ran risks a dozen times a day that might have given her the illness.
It's absurd to say she caught it with us."

If he had not been sincerely sorry for them he would have been annoyed.
"Pepper tells me," he continued, "that he left the house because he
thought them so careless. He says they never washed their vegetables
properly. Poor people! It's a fearful price to pay. But it's only what
I've seen over and over again--people seem to forget that these things
happen, and then they do happen, and they're surprised."

Mrs. Thornbury agreed with him that they had been very careless, and
that there was no reason whatever to think that she had caught the fever
on the expedition; and after talking about other things for a short
time, she left him and went sadly along the passage to her own room.
There must be some reason why such things happen, she thought to
herself, as she shut the door. Only at first it was not easy to
understand what it was. It seemed so strange--so unbelievable. Why, only
three weeks ago--only a fortnight ago, she had seen Rachel; when she
shut her eyes she could almost see her now, the quiet, shy girl who was
going to be married. She thought of all that she would have missed
had she died at Rachel's age, the children, the married life, the
unimaginable depths and miracles that seemed to her, as she looked back,
to have lain about her, day after day, and year after year. The stunned
feeling, which had been making it difficult for her to think, gradually
gave way to a feeling of the opposite nature; she thought very quickly
and very clearly, and, looking back over all her experiences, tried to
fit them into a kind of order. There was undoubtedly much suffering,
much struggling, but, on the whol