Page:Dark Hester.djvu/186

you said that. You have forgotten that there is a date engraved inside it.’—Yet—was it just possible that Aunt Harriet Beaton had lived to a great age and died in 1918?

‘Well, I must be off.—You are busy,’ said Ingpen. There had been a pause, a heavy suspended pause, like a weight held in the air between them, and it seemed to come down with a thud and crash as his voice broke into it. ‘There is nothing worse than losing things, is there?’

‘No; there’s not,’ said Monica. She had remained standing on the stone kerb of the fireplace, a little lifted above the floor, so that their eyes were on a level as they looked across at each other.

‘I never minded anything so much in my life, I think,’ said Ingpen, who had not moved to go and who still turned his ring while he looked at her, ‘as losing a dog once, in Marseilles. It was my fault. I had just landed; and there was a great crowd; and I ought to have had him on a lead. I looked for him all day and all night.’

‘And you never found him?’ Monica asked, after another pause, in which she wondered whether there were some symbolic intention in this reminiscence.

‘Yes. I found him. The heat was terrific and he had run all day, half demented I suppose. And he