"

She raised her eyebrows, and answered lightly, "I'm sure I don't know."

He put a heavy hand on her knee. "But I do," he said, and her mouth
drooped and quivered. She knew she had laid herself open to an attack
she could not repel.

"He'll get me this way," she found herself almost whispering, and aloud
she said, "George, let's wait and see. Tell me some more about when you
were little."

Things went smoothly after that, and when she went to bed, she talked to
Jane.

"We mustn't have any pauses," she said. "We can feel each other then. We
must talk all the time, and, oh, Jane, I'm so fond of silence!"

That night a voice waked her from a dreamless sleep.

"Helen, are you there?"

"Yes. Do you want something?"

"I have been thinking." Her tongue seemed too thick for her mouth. "Is
the dog on the landing?"

"Yes. He's always there. You haven't been afraid?"

"No. It's a big house for two women."

Helen sat up and, putting her feet into her slippers, she opened the
door. Jim was sleeping in the darkness: he woke, looked up and slept
again. It was a quiet night and not a door or window shook.

"I didn't say I heard anything. Go back to bed."

Helen obeyed, and she was falling softly into sleep when the voice, like
a plucked wire, snatched her back.

"Helen! I want to tell you something."

"I'm listening." She stared at the corner whence the voice was
struggling, and gradually the bed and Mildred's body freed themselves
from the gloom.

By a supreme effort, the next words were uttered without a blur and with
a loudness that chased itself about the room.

"I am to blame."

"To blame?" Helen questioned softly.

"It was my fault, not Edith's--not your mother's."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Notya dear."

"Your mother." The voice was querulous. "I was--unkind to your mother.
Oh--worse than that!" The bed creaked, and a long sigh gave place to the
halting speech in which the sibilants were thickened into lisping
sounds.

"She was my friend. She was beautiful. You are all like her. Miriam and
Rupert--" The voice dropped like a stone falling into a well without a
bottom, and Helen, listening for the sound of it, seemed to hear only
the echoes of Mildred Caniper's memory, coming fainter and fainter from
the past where the other woman made a gleam.

"Miriam--" she began again. "I haven't seen her."

"No. Uncle Alfred has taken her away."

"Ah!" Mildred said, and there was a silence.