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breathlessly,
    â€œI want to know about Mr Leonard. What happened to him after that?”
    â€œHe went back to South America.”
    â€œAt once?”
    He stared at her.
    â€œI don’t know—I was ill.”
    â€œAnd when you got well—was he there then?”
    â€œNo, he’d gone.”
    â€œWhere is he now?”
    â€œDown at Croyston. He’s got a chicken farm.”
    â€œIs that—near your house?” It was a child’s question asked in a child’s troubled voice.
    â€œThree and a half miles,” said Jervis Weare.
    â€œThank you,” said Nan.
    She put out her hand again.
    â€œGood-bye,” she said.
    Then just by the door she turned. He had crossed to open it with mechanical politeness. Her movement brought her round facing him as he stood with his hand on the door. Her lips were parted, and that direct gaze of hers puzzled him. It was evident that she wanted to say something. But what did she want to say, and would she say it, or would that astonishing nerve of hers fail to bring her up to the scratch? If he had known that what Nan wanted to say was, “Won’t you stop bothering about this wretched business and go off and play golf or something, and—and—go off to bed early and have a drink of hot milk the last thing?” would he have been moved to laughter, or to furious anger, or just possibly to something else? Nan wanted most earnestly to say these things, but her nerve failed before the bored politeness with which he was waiting for her to go.
    This time she went without saying good-bye.

VII
    Cynthia was married on the twentieth of August, and on the twenty-second she sailed with Frank Walsh for Australia. He was to be there for six months and then return to take up the junior partnership which his own small capital and Cynthia’s two thousand pounds had made possible.
    Nan looked at Cynthia as she came down the aisle on Frank’s arm, and wondered at the miracle which happiness had worked. Once again Cynthia bloomed in fragile beauty. She walked as if she trod on air. Her blue eyes were as full of light as the sky on a sunny morning. It seemed odd that good, plain, commonplace Frank Walsh should have the power to charm this beauty into being. Frank would never set the Thames on fire, but he would make Cynthia a kind and faithful husband.
    Nan went to the station to see them off. She was dutifully kissed by Frank, and rather perfunctorily by Cynthia. She walked back to a room strewn with all the odds and ends which had not been worth taking to Australia, with the feeling that she had come to a dead end. She was married, and Cynthia was married. She had lost her job. Cynthia didn’t want her any more. Jervis Weare certainly didn’t want her.
    She tidied the room, and then sat down to face the future. She had been married six days, but it was the first time she had really had time to think. To get Cynthia married, to buy Cynthia’s outfit, and to get her off by the same boat as Frank, had taken every bit of her thought and time and energy. It was characteristic of Cynthia that she had not even asked what Nan was going to do. For the moment her consciousness was so saturated with Frank as to be unable to take in anything else. She had gone as completely, if not as irrevocably, into another world as if she had died. Some day she would come back. Some day she would probably want Nan again. But Nan was not able to derive a great deal of comfort from this thought. She had mothered Cynthia ever since Cynthia was born and she, a baby of three, had cuddled the new baby in her small strong arms.
    When she had sat on the edge of the bed for about half an hour she got up, put on her hat, and went out. It was perfectly clear to her that she must have a job—and jobs do not just drop into your lap; you have to go out and wrestle for them.
    When she had been to three agencies, she felt better. None of the agencies had anything