r with a sort
of fit, and shake its little nerves up, so that it would be jumpy
all its life.

"It ought," said Nicky, "to sit in its little house all quiet and comfy
till it's time for it to come out."

He was struck with a sudden, poignant realization of what might be, what
probably would be, what ought to be, what he had wanted more than
anything, next to Veronica.

"It shall, Nicky, it shall be quiet and comfy."

"If _that_ came off all right," he said, "it would make it up to Mother
no end."

"It wouldn't make it up to me."

"You don't know what it would do," he said.

She thought: "I don't want it. I don't want anything but you."

"That's why," he went on, "I'm giving Don as the next of kin--the one
they'll wire to; because it won't take him that way; it'll only make him
madder to get out and do for them. I'm afraid of you or Mummy or Dad, or
Michael being told first."

"It doesn't matter a bit who's _told_ first. I shall _know_ first," she
said. "And you needn't be afraid. It won't kill either me or the baby.
If a shock could kill me I should have died long ago."

"When?"

"When you went to Desmond. Then, when I thought I couldn't bear it any
longer, something happened."

"What?"

"I don't know. I don't know what it _is_ now; I only know what it does.
It always happens--always--when you want it awfully. And when you're
quiet and give yourself up to it."

"It'll happen again."

He listened, frowning a little, not quite at ease, not quite interested;
puzzled, as if he had lost her trail; put off, as if something had come
between him and her.

"You can make it happen to other people," she was saying; "so that when
things get too awful they can bear them. I wanted it to happen to
Dorothy when she was in prison, and it did. She said she was absolutely
happy there; and that all sorts of queer things came to her. And, Nicky,
they were the same queer things that came to me. It was like something
getting through to her."

"I say--did you ever do it to me?"

"Only once, when you wanted it awfully."

"When? When?"

Now he was interested; he was intrigued; he was on her trail.

"When Desmond did--that awful thing. I wanted you to see that it didn't
matter, it wasn't the end."

"But that's just what I did see, what I kept on telling myself. It looks
as if it worked, then?"

"It doesn't always. It comes and goes. But I think with _you_ it would
always come; because you're more _me_ than other p