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quarters, how much she disliked his wife. There had been every sort of good reason to allege and Celia had been the chief of them, for Celia’s lungs had been threatened, and after a winter in Switzerland she had gone to live with a devoted woman-friend who ran a little chicken-farm in Essex. Every aspect of recoil was removed by Celia’s presence. ‘I can never be lonely with you at hand and Celia so near and Jeremy with me day and night———can I?’ she had said. Clive, perhaps, had been convinced. Even when Jeremy, the dear West Highland terrier who had grown up with him, died, he had remained, she felt sure, unaware of her deadly loneliness, though he had begged her to let him give her another dog. But she could not replace Jeremy. Another dog would have been a mere effigy. She often felt that she herself had become an effigy, bearing on its face the waxen smile of the past, and she often felt that it would be better to be dead. But that, she suspected, smiling ironically as she leaned her head against the window-frame and closed her eyes, was only when she was angry. She still longed too much for Clive to wish to leave a world where he lived. It was mere sentimentality to say that everything was over when one could suffer like this and tear one’s heart. Why could she