for Anne Majendie. Like some mourner for
whom superb weather has been provided on the funeral day of his beloved,
she felt in this young, wantoning, unsympathetic Spring the immortal
cruelty and irony of Nature. She was bearing her own heart to its burial;
and each street that they passed, as the slow cab rattled heavily on its
way from the station, was a stage in the intolerable progress; it brought
her a little nearer to the grave.

From her companion's respectful silence she gathered that, though lost
to the extreme funereal significance of their journey, he was not
indifferent; he shared to some extent her mourning mood. She was grateful
for that silence of his, because it justified her own.

They were both, by their temperaments, absurdly and diversely,
almost incompatibly young. At two-and-thirty Majendie, through very
worldliness, was a boy in his infinite capacity for recoil from trouble.
Anne had preserved that crude and cloistral youth which belongs to all
lives passed between walls that protect them from the world. At
seven-and-twenty she was a girl, with a girl's indestructible innocence.
She had not yet felt within her the springs of her own womanhood.
Marriage had not touched the spirit, which had kept itself apart even
from her happiness, in the days that were given her to be happy in. Her
suffering was like a child's, and her attitude to it bitterly immature.
It bounded her; it annihilated the intellectual form of time,
obliterating the past, and intercepting any view of a future. Only,
unlike a child, and unlike Majendie, she lacked the power of the
rebound to joy.

"Dear," said her husband anxiously, as the cab drew up at the door of the
house in Prior Street, "have you realised that poor Edith is probably
preparing to receive us with glee? Do you think you could manage to look
a little less unhappy?"

The words were a shock to her, but they did her the service of a shock
by recalling her to the realities outside herself. All the courtesies
and kindnesses she owed to those about her insisted that her bridal
home-coming must lack no sign of grace. She forced a smile.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know I was looking particularly unhappy."

It struck her that Walter was not looking by any means too happy himself.

"It doesn't matter; only, we don't want to dash her down, first thing, do
we?"

"No--no. Dear Edith. And there's Nanna--how sweet of her--and Kate, and
Mary, too."

The old nurse stood on the