made
him marry her.) It was as if in her the walls that divide every soul
from every other soul were made of some thin and porous stuff that let
things through. And in this life of yours, for the moments that she
shared it, she lived intensely, with uncanny delight and pain that were
her own and not her own.

And Frances wanted some hard, tight theory that would reconcile these
extremes of penetration and detachment.

She remembered that Ferdinand Cameron had been like that. He saw things.
He was a creature of queer, sudden sympathies and insights. She supposed
it was the Highland blood in both of them.

Mrs. Vereker on her right expressed the hope that Mr. Bartholomew was
better. Frances said he never would be better till chemists were
forbidden to advertise and the _British Medical Journal_ and _The
Lancet_ were suppressed. Bartie would read them; and they supplied him
with all sorts of extraordinary diseases.

She thought: Seeing things had not made poor Ferdie happy; and Veronica
in her innermost life was happy. She had been happy when she came back
from Germany, before she could have known that Nicky cared for her,
before Nicky knew it himself.

Supposing she had known it all the time? But that, Frances said to
herself, was nonsense. If she had known as much as all that, why should
she have suffered so horribly that she had nearly died of it?
Unless--supposing--it had been his suffering that she had nearly
died of?

Mrs. Norris on her left was saying that she was sorry to see Mr. Maurice
looking so sadly; and Frances heard herself replying that Morrie hadn't
been fit for anything since he was in South Africa.

Between two pop-gun batteries of conversation the serious theme
sustained itself. She thought: Then, Nicky had suffered. And Veronica
was the only one who knew. She knew more about Nicky than Nicky's
mother. This thought was disagreeable to Frances.

It was all nonsense. She didn't really believe that these things
happened. Yet, why not? Michael said they happened. Even Dorothy, who
didn't believe in God and immortality or anything, believed that.

She gave it up; it was beyond her; it bothered her.

"Yes. Seventy-nine her last birthday."

Mrs. Norris had said that Mrs. Fleming was wonderful.

Frances thought: "It's wonderful what Veronica does to them."

* * * * *

The sets had changed. Nicholas and a girl friend of Veronica's played
against George Vereker and