towards the door.

"Michael, may I wait?" she said. "You might want me, you know. Please
let me wait."

Lady Ashbridge's room was on the floor above, and Michael ran up the
intervening stairs three at a time. He knocked and entered and wondered
why he had been sent for, for she was sitting quietly on her sofa near
the window. But he noticed that Nurse Baker stood very close to her.
Otherwise there was nothing that was in any way out of the ordinary.

"And here he is," said the nurse reassuringly as he entered.

Lady Ashbridge turned towards the door as Michael came in, and when he
met her eyes he knew why he had been sent for, why at this moment Sir
James was being summoned. For she looked at him not with the clouded
eyes of affection, not with the mother-spirit striving to break
through the shrouding trouble of her brain, but with eyes of blank
non-recognition. She saw him with the bodily organs of her vision,
but the picture of him was conveyed no further: there was a blank wall
behind her eyes.

Michael did not hesitate. It was possible that he still might be
something to her, that he, his presence, might penetrate.

"But you are not resting, mother," he said. "Why are you sitting up? I
came to talk to you, as I said I would, while you rested."

Suddenly into those blank, irresponsive eyes there leaped recognition.
He saw the pupils contract as they focused themselves on him, and hand
in hand with recognition there leaped into them hate. Instantly that
was veiled again. But it had been there, and now it was not banished; it
lurked behind in the shadows, crouching and waiting.

She answered him at once, but in a voice that was quite toneless. It
seemed like that of a child repeating a lesson which it had learned by
heart, and could be pronounced while it was thinking of something quite
different.

"I was waiting till you came, my dear," she said. "Now I will lie down.
Come and sit by me, Michael."

She watched him narrowly while she spoke, then gave a quick glance at
her nurse, as if to see that they were not making signals to each other.
There was an easy chair just behind her head, and as Michael wheeled it
up near her sofa, he looked at the nurse. She moved her hand slightly
towards the left, and interpreting this, he moved the chair a little to
the left, so that he would not sit, as he had intended, quite close to
the sofa.

"And you enjoyed your day in the country, mother?" asked Michael.

She l