," said she. "The kettle's just
on the boil, and I'll wet you a cup o' tea this instant minute, and I've
a perfect picture of a chick a-roastin' ready for your bit o' dinner."

Jane leaned back in the cushioned chair and looked round the quiet,
pleasant little room. For the moment it seemed good to have a new place
to be unhappy in.

But afterwards, when Mrs Beale had gone and she was alone in the house,
there was time to think--all the time there had ever been since the
world began--all the time that there would ever be till the world ended.
Of that night, too, Jane cannot remember everything; but she knows that
she did not sleep, and that her eyes were dry: very dry and burning, as
though they had been licked into place between their lids by a tongue
of flame. It was a long night: a spacious night, with room in it for
more memories of Edgar than she had known herself mistress of.

Edgar, truculent schoolboy; Edgar at Oxford, superior to the point of
the intolerable; Edgar journalist, novelist, war correspondent--always
friend; Edgar going to America to lecture, and make the fortune that--he
said--would make all things possible. He had said that on the last
evening, when a lot of them--boys and girls, journalists, musicians, art
students--had gone to see him off at Euston. He had said it at the
instant of farewell, and had looked a question. Had she said "Yes"--or
only thought it? She had often wondered that, even when her brain was
clear.

Then--she pushed away the next thought with both hands, and drove
herself back to the day when the schoolboy next door whom she had
admired and hated, saved her pet kitten from the butcher's dog--an
heroic episode with blood in it and tears. Edgar's voice, the touch of
his hand, the swing of his waltz-step--the way his eyes smiled before
his mouth did. How bright his eyes were--and his hands were very strong.
He was strong every way: he would fight for his life--even with the
sea. Great, smooth, dark waves seemed rushing upon her in the quiet
room; she could hear the sound of them on the beach. Why had she come
near the sea? It was the same sea that---- She pushed the waves away with
both hands. The church clock struck two.

"You mustn't go mad, you know," she told herself very gently and
reasonably, "because of the boys."

Her hands had got clenched somehow, her whole body was rigid. She
relaxed the tense muscles deliberately, made up the fire, swept up the
hearth.

The ne