"

"I don't know what it was. But I know you did something and I know
that--whatever it was--_I_ wouldn't have done it."

And Mary answered quietly. "If I were you, Ally, I wouldn't show my
feelings quite so plainly."

And Ally looked at her again.

"It's not _my_ feelings--" she said.

Mary reddened. "I don't know what you mean."

"You'll know, some day," Ally said and turned her back on her.

* * * * *

Mary went out, closing the door softly, as if she spared her sick
sister's unreasonably irritated nerves. She felt rather miserable as
she undressed alone in her bedroom. She was wounded in her sweetness
and her goodness, and she was also a little afraid of what Ally might
take it into her head to say or do. She didn't try to think what
Ally had meant. Her sweetness and goodness, with their instinct of
self-preservation, told her that it might be better not.

The August night was warm and tender, and, when Mary had got into bed
and lay stretched out in contentment under the white sheet, she began
to think of Rowcliffe to the exclusion of all other interests; and
presently, between a dream and a dream, she fell asleep.

* * * * *

But Ally could not sleep.

She lay till dawn thinking and thinking, and turning from side to
side between her thoughts. They were not concerned with Gwenda or with
Rowcliffe. After her little spurt of indignation she had ceased to
think about Gwenda or Rowcliffe either. Mary's news had made her think
about herself, and her thoughts were miserable. Ally was so far like
her father the Vicar, that the idea of Mary's marrying was intolerable
to her and for precisely the same reason, because she saw no prospect
of marrying herself. Her father had begun by forbidding Mary's
engagement but he would end by sanctioning it. He would never sanction
_her_ marriage to Jim Greatorex.

Even if she defied her father and married Jim Greatorex in spite of
him there would be almost as much shame in it as if, like Essy, she
had never married him at all.

And she couldn't live without him.

Ally had suffered profoundly from the shock that had struck her down
under the arcades on the road to Upthorne. It had left her more than
ever helpless, more than ever subject to infatuation, more than ever
morally inert. Ally's social self had grown rigid in the traditions
of her class, and she was still aware of the unsuitability of her
intimacy