ressed him to tell me. He said no one must know; it
was something to do with his wife. Right up to the end we were Mr. Bast
and Miss Schlegel. I was going to tell him that he must be frank with me
when I saw his eyes, and guessed that Mr. Wilcox had ruined him in two
ways, not one. I drew him to me. I made him tell me. I felt very lonely
myself. He is not to blame. He would have gone on worshipping me. I want
never to see him again, though it sounds appalling. I wanted to give him
money and feel finished. Oh, Meg, the little that is known about these
things!"

She laid her face against the tree.

"The little, too, that is known about growth! Both times it was
loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards. Did Leonard grow out of
Paul?"

Margaret did not speak for a moment. So tired was she that her attention
had actually wandered to the teeth--the teeth that had been thrust into
the tree's bark to medicate it. From where she sat she could see them
gleam. She had been trying to count them. "Leonard is a better growth
than madness," she said. "I was afraid that you would react against Paul
until you went over the verge."

"I did react until I found poor Leonard. I am steady now. I shan't ever
like your Henry, dearest Meg, or even speak kindly about him, but all
that blinding hate is over. I shall never rave against Wilcoxes any
more. I understand how you married him, and you will now be very happy."

Margaret did not reply.

"Yes," repeated Helen, her voice growing more tender, "I do at last
understand."

"Except Mrs. Wilcox, dearest, no one understands our little movements."

"Because in death--I agree."

"Not quite. I feel that you and I and Henry are only fragments of that
woman's mind. She knows everything. She is everything. She is the house,
and the tree that leans over it. People have their own deaths as well
as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall
differ in our nothingness. I cannot believe that knowledge such as hers
will perish with knowledge such as mine. She knew about realities. She
knew when people were in love, though she was not in the room. I don't
doubt that she knew when Henry deceived her."

"Good-night, Mrs. Wilcox," called a voice.

"Oh, good-night, Miss Avery."

"Why should Miss Avery work for us?" Helen murmured.

"Why, indeed?"

Miss Avery crossed the lawn and merged into the hedge that divided
it from the farm. An old gap, which Mr. Wilcox had f