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fellow; perhaps is bad still.—But when one is as old as I am one has a right to like the bad.Oh, Clive—you have made me so happy!’

‘Have I, darling?—That’s beautiful of you,’ said Clive in his exhausted voice.

Yes; she was happy. So long as she could hide herself with him, in him, there could still be happiness; the happiness of closed eyes, stopped ears. Everything was shut out but their nearness. Hester was forgotten. Clive allowed her to forget Hester;—was it because he was so tired? He was so tired that it might have been as if she were to gather him up in her arms and carry him to bed, her little child again.

They sat in silence for what seemed to Monica a long time, a silence so profound that she felt it, at last, lapping insidiously at the ramparts of her contentment. If they were silent for too long they might remember too much and Clive felt that, too, perhaps, for he raised his head, not looking at her, and, lifting her hands, kissed them gently, first one and then the other, holding them clasped in his as he said, finding his words with such care that it was as if he sifted them out and laid them in a symbolic mosaic before her: ‘You see, you’ve always been so much more than a mother.’