d be
better perhaps--

Mrs. Fyne assented hurriedly to the unspoken conclusion: "Oh certainly!
Certainly," wondering to herself what was to be done with Flora next; but
she was not very much surprised at the change in the old lady's view of
Flora de Barral. She almost understood it.

What came next was a German family, the continental acquaintances of the
wife of one of Fyne's colleagues in the Home Office. Flora of the
enigmatical glances was dispatched to them without much reflection. As
it was not considered absolutely necessary to take them into full
confidence, they neither expected the girl to be specially cheerful nor
were they discomposed unduly by the indescribable quality of her glances.
The German woman was quite ordinary; there were two boys to look after;
they were ordinary, too, I presume; and Flora, I understand, was very
attentive to them. If she taught them anything it must have been by
inspiration alone, for she certainly knew nothing of teaching. But it
was mostly "conversation" which was demanded from her. Flora de Barral
conversing with two small German boys, regularly, industriously,
conscientiously, in order to keep herself alive in the world which held
for her the past we know and the future of an even more undesirable
quality--seems to me a very fantastic combination. But I believe it was
not so bad. She was being, she wrote, mercifully drugged by her task.
She had learned to "converse" all day long, mechanically, absently, as if
in a trance. An uneasy trance it must have been! Her worst moments were
when off duty--alone in the evening, shut up in her own little room, her
dulled thoughts waking up slowly till she started into the full
consciousness of her position, like a person waking up in contact with
something venomous--a snake, for instance--experiencing a mad impulse to
fling the thing away and run off screaming to hide somewhere.

At this period of her existence Flora de Barral used to write to Mrs.
Fyne not regularly but fairly often. I don't know how long she would
have gone on "conversing" and, incidentally, helping to supervise the
beautifully stocked linen closets of that well-to-do German household, if
the man of it had not developed in the intervals of his avocations (he
was a merchant and a thoroughly domesticated character) a psychological
resemblance to the Bournemouth old lady. It appeared that he, too,
wanted to be loved.

He was not, however, of a conquering t