e, but more cheerful than she had known him for years.
Arthur seemed to be doing wonders with the men. They were coming to
trust him.

"The difficulty I have always been up against," explained her father,
"has been their suspicion. 'What's the cunning old rascal up to now?
What's his little game?' That is always what I have felt they were
thinking to themselves whenever I have wanted to do anything for them. It
isn't anything he says to them. It seems to be just he, himself."

He sketched out their plans to her. It seemed to be all going in at one
ear and out at the other. What was the matter with her? Perhaps she was
tired without knowing it. She would get him to tell her all about it to-
morrow. Also, to-morrow, she would tell him about Phillips, and ask his
advice. It was really quite late. If he talked any more now, it would
give her a headache. She felt it coming on.

She made her "good-night" extra affectionate, hoping to disguise her
impatience. She wanted to get up to her own room.

But even that did not help her. It seemed in some mysterious way to be
no longer her room, but the room of someone she had known and half
forgotten: who would never come back. It gave her the same feeling she
had experienced on returning to the house in London: that the place was
haunted. The high cheval glass from her mother's dressing-room had been
brought there for her use. The picture of an absurdly small child--the
child to whom this room had once belonged--standing before it naked, rose
before her eyes. She had wanted to see herself. She had thought that
only her clothes stood in the way. If we could but see ourselves, as in
some magic mirror? All the garments usage and education has dressed us
up in laid aside. What was she underneath her artificial niceties, her
prim moralities, her laboriously acquired restraints, her unconscious
pretences and hypocrisies? She changed her clothes for a loose robe, and
putting out the light drew back the curtains. The moon peeped in over
the top of the tall pines, but it only stared at her, indifferent. It
seemed to be looking for somebody else.

Suddenly, and intensely to her own surprise, she fell into a passionate
fit of weeping. There was no reason for it, and it was altogether so
unlike her. But for quite a while she was unable to control it.
Gradually, and of their own accord, her sobs lessened, and she was able
to wipe her eyes and take stock of herself