you!" Her voice rang with the labour of her breast.

Lucy smiled as he caught the word. He would have condemned the stress of
it, but that Mrs. Tailleur's voice pleaded forgiveness for any word she
chose to utter. "Even," he said to himself, "if you could forget her
face."

He couldn't forget it. As he sat there trying to read, it came between
him and his book. It tormented him to find its meaning. Kitty's face was
a thing both delicate and crude. When she was gay it showed a blurred
edge, a fineness in peril. When she was sad it wore the fixed look of
artificial maturity. It was like a young bud opened by inquisitive
fingers and forced to be a flower. Some day, the day before it withered,
the bruised veins would glow again, and a hectic spot betray, like a
bruise, the violation of its bloom. At the moment, repose gave back its
beauty to Kitty's face. Lucy noticed that the large black pupils of her
eyes were ringed with a dark blue iris, spotted with black. There was no
colour about her at all except that blue, and the delicate red of her
mouth. In her black gown she was a revelation of pure form. Colour would
have obscured her, made her ineffectual.

He sat silent, hardly daring to look at her. So keen was his sense of
her that he could almost have heard the beating of her breast against
her gown. Once she sighed, and Lucy stirred. Once she stirred slightly,
and Lucy, unconsciously responsive, sighed. Then Kitty's glance lit on
him. He turned a page of his book ostentatiously, and Kitty's glance
slunk home again. She closed her eyes and opened them to find Lucy's
eyes looking at her over the top of his book. Poor Lucy was so perturbed
at being detected in that particular atrocity that he rose, drew his
chair to the hearth, and arranged himself in an attitude that made
these things impossible.

He was presently aware of Jane launching herself on a gentle tide of
conversation, and of Mrs. Tailleur trembling pathetically on the brink
of it.

"Do you like Southbourne?" he heard Jane saying.

Then suddenly Mrs. Tailleur plunged in.

"No," said she; "I hate it. I hate any place I have to be alone in, if
it's only for five minutes."

Lucy felt that it was Jane who drew back now, in sheer distress. He
tried to think of something to say, and gave it up, stultified by his
compassion.

The silence was broken by Jane.

"Robert," said she, "have you written to the children?"

Mrs. Tailleur's face became suddenly sombr