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driven his beloved to strange, uncharacteristic strategems, and as he and Celia left her Monica heard an echo of her own specious voice as it had found the prevarications which were all that she could give him.

She sat now alone in the drawing-room. The evening was marvellously warm and still and all the others were in the garden. It was part of old age, Monica thought, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the piano, that one could never tell anybody that one’s heart was broken. No one cared if old hearts broke; it was taken for granted that they must break; and in silence.

She was suddenly aware that somebody was looking at her. It was as if a presence had, soundlessly, entered the room, and opening her eyes she saw Ingpen’s face outside the window. The sky behind his head was like the sky in an early Italian picture; pale yet deep in tone, still, remote and merciful; his head was dark against it and his face featureless. She only felt his intent gaze and knew that it had searched and summoned her. It was so a ghost might look in on one and she must look like a ghost to him, gazing back, with her sorrowful face, from the dusky room. So they might always remember each other, the future, not the past, thus taking