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after all, they got on so well together. They both liked church work, bridge and listening to the wireless in the evenings. And then they looked so alike, both tall and dark with brown eyes; it was difficult to believe that Rhoda was the elder, for she was neater and better dressed, better preserved, one might almost have said. But then she had not been married and had two children. She had always lived very comfortably, keeping house for her parents, living alone for a short time after their deaths, and then coming to live here with Mabel and the children. It was a very satisfactory arrangement and Rhoda was not in the least envious of her sister’s fuller life, for now that they were both in their fifties there seemed to be very little difference between them. She would perhaps have liked what she called ‘the experience of marriagea vague phrase which seemed to cover all those aspects which one didn’t talk about, but she would not have liked to have had it with poor Gregory Swan. She was still sometimes faintly interested in men, as she was now in Alaric Lydgate, but in what way she hardly knew. She certainly did not think of marriage any more.
    Every evening there was the arrival of Malcolm and Deirdre to look forward to. After a day at work they were, or should have been, full of interesting little scraps of gossip and information about this and that, and if they sometimes seemed uncommunicative and withdrawn it was quite easy to draw them out with a little tactful questioning and perseverence.
    Malcolm came in now as she was laying the table. He was a pleasant-looking young man of twenty-five with brownish hair and eyes and nothing particularly distinctive about him. He put his bowler hat and neat flat brief-case down on the hall table and went into the downstairs cloakroom to wash his hands.
    ‘Had a good day?’ Rhoda called out.
    ‘Not too bad, thanks,’ he replied, as always, and then went through to the kitchen to get his usual glass of beer.
    Rhoda went into the hall and took up his evening paper which was lying neatly folded on top of his brief-case. There had been a nasty murder, or series of murders ; bodies of women had been discovered in a house in a not very nice part of London, and Rhoda, in common with a great many people in all walks of life, was anxious to read about the latest developments. It was dark in the hall, for the stained-glass windows on either side of the door did not let in much light, but she sat down and began to read avidly.
    ‘Deirdre’s rather late tonight,’ said Mabel, passing through to the dining-room with a dish of salad in her hand.
    ‘Mm, yes,’ murmured Rhoda, turning a page of the newspaper. ‘ They noticed a strong smell, it says, no wonder.’
    ‘As we are just having salad, I think we had better start without her,’ Mabel went on. ‘1 expect she’ll be in soon,’
    Deirdre was at that moment sitting on top of a bus which was moving very slowly along a suburban road. The drinks she had had seemed to have sharpened her perceptions and she looked about her in a detached way, noticing her surroundings as if she were a stranger visiting the neighbourhood for the first time. But she was not yet detached enough to appreciate any of the beauties of the scene. The houses seemed to her ugly and their well-kept gardens conventional and uninteresting. The wallflowers and tulips were the same every year and the lilacs and laburnums obviously could not grow in real country gardens. Even the magnolias were not the right kind, with shiny leaves and huge creamy flowers, which one saw growing against Georgian houses in country villages.
    She got off the bus and hurried along her own road. Mr. Dulke who lived opposite, was cutting his hedge, but she pretended not to see him, walking along with her head bent, fearful of the facetious greeting or comment that might come. Towards the end of the road the houses became larger and there was the church, a modern red brick building