ge vow.

"Thank you," he said.

He wondered if she would turn to him with some sign of tenderness,
whether she would stoop to him and touch him with her hand or her lips;
or whether she looked to him to offer the first caress.

She did nothing. It was as if her intentness, her concentration upon
her holy purpose held her. While her soul did but turn to him in the
darkness, it kept and would keep their hands and lips apart.

He divined that she was only half-won. But, though her body yet moved in
its charmed inviolate circle, he felt dimly that the spiritual barrier
was down.

She turned from him and went slowly to the door. He opened it and
followed her. On the stairs she parted from him and went alone into his
sister's bedroom.

Edith's spine had been hurting her in the night. She lay flat and
exhausted, and the embrace of her loving arms was slow and frail.

Edith was what she called "dressed," and waiting for her sister-in-law.
The little table by her bed was strewn with the presents she had bought
and made for Anne. A birthday was a very serious affair for Edith. She
was not content to buy (buying was nothing; anybody could buy); she must
also make, and make beautifully. "I mayn't have any legs that can carry
me," said Edith; "but I've hands and I _will_ use them. If it wasn't for
my hands I'd be nothing but a great lumbering, lazy mass of palpitating
heart." But her making had become every year more and more expensive. Her
beautiful, pitiful embroideries were paid for in bad nights. And at six
o'clock that morning she had given her little dismal cry: "Oh, Nanna,
Nanna, my beast of a spine is going to bother me to-day, and it's Anne's
birthday!"

"And what else," said Nanna severely, "do you expect, Miss Edith?"

"I didn't expect this. I do believe it's getting worse."

"Worse?" Nanna was contemptuous. "It was worse on Master Walter's
birthday last year."

(Last year she had made a waistcoat.)

"I can't think," moaned Edith, "why it's always bad on birthdays."

But however badly "it" might behave in the night, it was never permitted
to destroy the spirit of the day.

Anne looked anxiously at the collapsed, exhausted figure in the bed.

"Yes," said Edith, having smiled at her sister-in-law with magnificent
mendacity, "you may well look at me. You couldn't make yourself as flat
as I am if you tried. There are two books for you, and a thingummy-jig,
and a handkerchief to blow your dear nose with."