s met again, and their hatred for one another
was so settled, so historic, so traditional an affair, that their glance
now was almost friendly.

Then Rachel bent down very slowly and kissed her grandmother's cheek.
How much, she wondered, did she know of the Nita affair? Nita's spite
would, assuredly, have found a happy ground in which to plant its seed.
Oh! how she loathed this thick clouded atmosphere, this deceit, this
deceit! It seemed that, at every turn since her marriage, she had been
dragged into an atmosphere of disguise and subterfuge and
double-dealing.

Well, she was soon to be done with it. At the thought of what her
grandmother would say did she know of her friendship with Breton her
heart beat triumphantly. There at any rate was a weapon!

"Well, good-bye, my dear. Come and see me again soon."

"Yes, grandmamma--good-bye."

IV

In the carriage with Roddy she suddenly laughed.

All those people, moving so solemnly with such self-importance about
that room. The Duke, Lord Richard, Aunt Adela ... Norris, the
footman....

Over them all that fierce commanding portrait. And upstairs that old,
sick woman....

And beyond, away from that house, a war that that old woman and those
self-important people saw only as a means of increasing their own
self-importance.

It was all as a box of tin soldiers and a parcel of stiff china-faced
dolls--

What were they all about? What did they think they were all doing? What,
after all, was she, Rachel? Had they no conception of the sawdust that
they all were beside this real, swiftly moving, death-dealing War that
was suddenly amongst them?

"What is it?" said Roddy.

"Grandmother--grandmother--my dear, delightful, wonderful grandmother.
To think of her sitting all alone up there in her bedroom and all those
people moving about downstairs--all so conscious of her. And yet she
does nothing--_nothing_." Rachel, in her excitement, struck her knee
with her hand. "She isn't even clever, really--She's never in all her
life been known to say a witty thing--never. She doesn't really know
much about politics.... She just sits there and acts--That's what it's
always been, acting the whole time. If it's effective to be old and
feeble she _is_ old and feeble--if it's effective to be fantastic she
_is_ fantastic--She just sits still and takes people in. Why, if she'd
wanted she could have been going out all these thirty years, I believe!"

"You're always unfair to her,