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"No," said she. "Anne's one of those people who see best with their eyes shut."

"Well, they're open enough now in all conscience. But there's one thing she hasn't found out. She doesn't know how it happened. Can you tell her? I can't. I told her there were extenuating circumstances; but of course I couldn't go into them."

"What did she say?"

"She said no circumstances could extenuate facts." "I can hear her saying it."

"I understand her state of mind," said Majendie. "She couldn't see the circumstances for the facts."

"Our Anne is but young. In ten years' time she won't be able to see the facts for the circumstances."

"Well-will you tell her?"

"Of course I will."

"Make her see that I'm not necessarily an utter brute just because I————”

"I'll make her see everything."

"Forgive me for bothering you."

"Dear-forgive me for breaking my promise and deceiving you."

He bent to her weak arms.

"I believe," she whispered, "the end will yet justify the means."

"Oh-the end."

He didn't see it; but he was convinced that there could hardly be a worse beginning.

He went upstairs, where Anne lay in the agonies of her bilious attack. He found comfort, rather than gave it, by holding handkerchiefs steeped in eau-de-Cologne to her forehead. It gratified him to find that she would let him do it without shrinking from his touch.

But Anne was past that.

FOR

CHAPTER IV

OR once in his life Majendie was glad that he had a business. Shipping (he was a ship-owner) was a distraction from the miserable problem that weighed on him at home.

Anne's morning face was cold to him. She lay crushed in her bed. She had had a bad night, and he knew himself to be the cause of it.

His pity for her hurt like passion.

"How is she?" asked Edith, as he came into her room before going to the office.

"She's a wreck," he said, "a ruin. She's had an awful night. Be kind to her, Edie."

Edie was very kind. But she said to herself that if Anne was a ruin that was not at all a bad thing.

Edith Majendie was a loving but shrewd observer of the people of her world. Lying on her back she saw them at an unusual angle, almost as if they moved on a plane invisible to persons who go about upright on their legs. The four walls of her room concentrated her vision in bounding it. She saw few women and fewer men, but she saw them apart from those superficial activities which distract and darken judgment. Faces that she was obliged to see bending over her had another aspect for Edith than that which they presented to the world at large. Anne Majendie, who had come so near to Edith, had always put a certain distance between herself and her other friends. While they were chiefly im

pressed with her superb superiority, and saw her forever standing on a pedestal, Edith declared that she knew nothing of Anne's austere and impressive attributes. She protested against anything so dreary as the other people's view of her. They and their absurd pedestals! She refused to regard her sister-in-law as an established solemnity, eminent and lonely in the scene. Pedestals were all very well at a proper distance, but at a close view they were foreshortening to the human figure. Other people might like to see more pedestal than Anne; she preferred to see more Anne than pedestal. If they didn't know that Anne was dear and sweet, she did. So did Walter.

If they wanted proof of it, why, would any other woman have put up with her and her wretched spine? Weren't they all, Anne's friends, sorry for Anne just because of it, of her? If you came to think of it, if you traced everything back to the beginning, her spine had been the cause of all Anne's troubles.

That was how she had always reasoned it out. No suffering had ever obscured the lucidity of Edith's mind. She knew that it was her spine that had kept her brother from marrying all those years. He couldn't leave her alone with it, neither could he ask any woman to share the house inhabited, pervaded, dominated by it. Unsafeguarded by marriage, he had fallen into evil hands. To Edith, who had plenty of leisure for reflection, all this had become terribly clear.

Then Anne had come, the strong woman who could bear Walter's burden for him. She had been jealous of Anne at first, for five minutes. Then she had blessed

her.

But Edith, as she had told her brother, was not a fool.

And all the time, while her heart leapt to the image of Anne in her dearness and sweetness, her brain saw perfectly well that her sister-in-law had not been free from the sin of pride (that came, said Edith, of standing on a pedestal. It was better to lie on a couch than stand on a pedestal; you knew, at any rate, where you were).

Now, as Edith also said, there can be nothing more prostrating to a woman's pride than a bad bilious attack. Especially when it exposes you to the devoted ministrations of a husband you have made up your mind to disapprove of, and compels you to a baffling view of him. Anne owned herself baffled. Her attack had chastened her. She had been touched by Walter's kindness, by the evidence (if she had needed it) that she was as dear to him in her ignominious agony as she had been in the beauty of her triumphal health. As he moved about her, he became to her insistent outward sense the man she had loved because of his goodness. It was so that she had first seen his strong masculine figure moving about Edith on her couch, handling her with the supreme gentleness of strength. She had not been two days in the house in Prior Street before her memories assailed her. Her new and detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him. The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected by an army of associations. The manifestations of his actual presence were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her memory was in league with her. the melting mood came over her, her conscience resisted But when and rose against them both.

Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not

tell by what signs she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening. She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's home-coming.

To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded, and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to them.

To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious of its own pathetic She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it did not appeal to her in any way at all. "Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of mine-of yours, I mean."

"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not jealous."

"No more am I," said Edie.

"Let's say both our

bulbs. I wish he wouldn't garden quite so much, though.

It always makes his head ache."

"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly.

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