monstrance. "It is a service I ask of you by right of our common
humanity. Go in to her at once, please."

With his hand on her arm he turned her to the gate, and opened it for
her. "Let no one else come near her," he said. "The butcher delivering
our meat gave me the news. He saw it on the newspaper board at the
village shop. Everyone in the village who reads it will come up at once
to tell my wife. Keep them away. She has a weak heart; told suddenly,
she might--Don't let her stir out. Don't let her hold communication
with anyone till I return."

He put up a trembling hand in the direction of his clerical hat, but
lacked the spirit to lift it, and turned hurriedly away.

"But, Mr Jones!" she called. She made a step or two after him. "It will
be so awkward--for her, I mean. She won't understand. You see, I hardly
know your wife."

He raised his strengthless hand for a few inches, and let it fall with
a gesture of hopeless wretchedness. "Oh, what do such things matter?"
he groaned.

She was ashamed to persist. "I thought perhaps someone in the
village--someone she knew----"

"They could do nothing with her," he explained. "If she wanted them to
go, she would tell them to go; she can't tell you. If she wanted to go
into the village, she would go----"

"How soon will you be back?"

"An hour. Two hours. I must wire to Portsmouth, and wait a reply." He
began to walk on again. "When I come back I shall--know," he said, and
shuffled forward, with drooping back, and legs that shook beneath him,
on his way.

Once he turned, and, seeing her still at the gate, pointed a weakly
imperative finger at the house without stopping in his progress.

Hardly crediting that it could be upon her, Flora Macmichel, accustomed
to move in paths so carefully smoothed, to have all ugly things hidden
from her sight, that this task of matchless unpleasantness had been
thrust, she turned and walked slowly towards the Rectory door. There
are so many women in the world, shrieking, gesticulating, ready to rush
into any fray a-brewing; so many quiet and strong and helpful, aching
to take other people's burdens upon their shoulders; she had never
sought to identify herself with one or the other species, holding the
comfortable doctrine that we cannot all be servers, that in the general
scheme those who only stand to be waited on also hold a useful place.

Why need she do this thing? Three weeks ago she had not known these
people existed; thre