it in the back room
of his brain his forehead self was saying:

"So Sir Joseph befriended you, and that was what won your amazing,
unquestioning gratitude?"

"That and a thousand thousand little kindnesses. I loved them like
mother and father."

"But your own--er--mother and father--you must have had parents of
your own--what was their nationality?"

"Oh, they were, as we say, 'Americans from 'way back.' But my father
left my mother soon after I was born. We weren't much good, I guess.
It was when I was a baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I
got my runaway nature from him. But I've outgrown that. Anyway, he
left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother
was a seamstress in a little town out West--an awful hole it was. I
was a tiny little girl when they took me to my mother's funeral. I
remember that, but I can't remember her. That was my first death. And
now this! I've lost a mother and father twice. That hasn't happened to
many people. So you must forgive me for being so crazy. So many of my
loved are dead. It's frightful. We lose so many as we grow up. Life is
like walking through a graveyard, with the sextons always busy opening
new places. There was so much crying and loneliness before, and now
this war goes on and on--as if we needed a war!"

"God knows, we don't."

Marie Louise went to the window and raised the curtain. A haggard gray
light had been piping the edges of the shade. Now the full casement
let in a flood of warm morning radiance.

The dull street was alive again. Sparrows were hopping. Wagons were on
the move. Small and early tradesfolk were about their business.
Servants were opening houses as shops were being opened in town.

The big wheel had rolled London round into the eternal day. Doors and
windows were being flung ajar. Newspapers and milk were taken in,
ashes put out, cats and dogs released, front stoops washed, walks
swept, gardens watered. Brooms were pendulating. In the masters' rooms
it was still night and slumber-time, but humble people were alert.

The morning after a death is a fearful thing. Those papers on the
steps across the way were doubtless loaded with more tragedies from
the front, and among the cruel facts was the lie that concealed the
truth about the Weblings, who were to read no more morning papers, eat
no more breakfasts, set out on no more journeys.

Grief came to Marie Louise now with a less brackish taste. Her sorrow
had t