easantly, "And don't tell him
he lies. We all lie. I knew quite well they were coming by the four-six
train. I saw it pass."

"That reminds me. Another child run over at the Roman crossing.
Whish--bang--dead."

"Oh my foot! Oh my foot, my foot!" said Mrs. Failing, and paused to take
breath.

"Bad?" he asked callously.

Leighton, with bowed head, passed them with the manuscript and
disappeared among the laurels. The twinge of pain, which had been
slight, passed away, and they proceeded, descending a green airless
corridor which opened into the gravel drive.

"Isn't it odd," said Mrs. Failing, "that the Greeks should be
enthusiastic about laurels--that Apollo should pursue any one who could
possibly turn into such a frightful plant? What do you make of Rickie?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Shall I lend you his story to read?"

He made no reply.

"Don't you think, Stephen, that a person in your precarious position
ought to be civil to my relatives?"

"Sorry, Mrs. Failing. I meant to be civil. I only hadn't--anything to
say."

She a laughed. "Are you a dear boy? I sometimes wonder; or are you a
brute?"

Again he had nothing to say. Then she laughed more mischievously, and
said--

"How can you be either, when you are a philosopher? Would you mind
telling me--I am so anxious to learn--what happens to people when they
die?"

"Don't ask ME." He knew by bitter experience that she was making fun of
him.

"Oh, but I do ask you. Those paper books of yours are so up-to-date.
For instance, what has happened to the child you say was killed on the
line?"

The rain increased. The drops pattered hard on the leaves, and outside
the corridor men and women were struggling, however stupidly, with the
facts of life. Inside it they wrangled. She teased the boy, and laughed
at his theories, and proved that no man can be an agnostic who has a
sense of humour. Suddenly she stopped, not through any skill of his, but
because she had remembered some words of Bacon: "The true atheist is he
whose hands are cauterized by holy things." She thought of her distant
youth. The world was not so humorous then, but it had been more
important. For a moment she respected her companion, and determined to
vex him no more.

They left the shelter of the laurels, crossed the broad drive, and were
inside the house at last. She had got quite wet, for the weather would
not let her play the simple life with impunity. As for him, he seemed a
piece of