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but she knocked the bowl out of me 'and. Look, you c'n see, if you don't believe me!”
    The woman pointed to a large stain on the edge of the filthy blanket. Edith noted, too, that there were faint traces of what appeared to be porridge on Becky's chin. She opened her chain purse, and took out three half-sovereigns.
    “Will this pay what she owes? It's all I can spare; I've got to leave enough to get home.”
    The sight of the money eased the strain from the woman's face. Truculence gave way to coarse amiability as she reached for the money.
    “That'll about cover it. I did right to tell you, didn't I? He must have served her crool. Still, that's men all over, ain't it? I'll get her things together, while you wash an' dress her. There's no trunk. He took that, I reckon.”
    Saul had indeed “served her crool”, as Edith discovered the moment she began to wash her sister's limp body. There were long greenish bruises on both thighs, and more recent bruises over the whole area from left shoulder to elbow. One eye was slightly discoloured, and the back of her right hand was puffed and mottled, as though it had been struck with something flat and heavy, in warding off a blow aimed at the head.
    Together they did what they could. Becky was dressed and led downstairs. A scrubby-haired youth, the son of the slut, went along the Embankment to fetch a cab, and as Edith was settling her sister inside, and preparing to enter herself, the landlady imparted one final piece of information.
    “There was a kid, you know. Born dead, so I 'eard, a bit before time!”
    That was all Edith was ever able to learn about Becky's brief absence from the vicarage. She never discovered whether Saul had actually married the girl, or whether the child had been still-born, or had died within days. When Becky made a partial recovery her mind resisted all attempts to probe into the immediate past. This could only be guessed at through her behaviour during her “spells”, the “getting-ready” spell, the “layette” spell, and, most upsetting of all, the “getting-supper-for-Saul” spell.
    Apart from these flashbacks Becky's mind dwelt exclusively in the more distant past, in her childhood and girlhood days, up to shortly before the time she had met Saul during a tramp across the Doone Valley.
    After a few half-hearted attempts to get at the facts Edith was content to let her sister remain there, chattering happily of half-forgotten croquet tournaments, and Sunday School picnics, and talking of long-dead parishioners as though, at any moment, they might call at the Vicarage to put up banns, or discuss a forthcoming bazaar. Even Lickapaw the cat did not really belong to the present, but was identified with a cat the sisters had owned, jointly, as children.
    Edith had long since adjusted herself to moving in and out of this shadow world. She would converse with her sister gravely about an epidemic of scarlet fever in Devon, in 1890, as though it was a current topic and, a moment later, walk to the back door and deal with a tradesman, or hawker. Physically, her sister could do almost everything for herself, having relearned the habits of every-day life under her sister's patient tuition, during the long period they spent together in the rented bungalow at Simonsbath, soon after Becky's initial stay in hospital had ended.
    Becky's mental age was now about seven, and it was only during a “spell” that Edith had to watch her closely. Sometimes a “spell” lasted all day, more often only an hour or so. They invariably followed the same pattern: a frenzied packing of clothes, an equally frenzied “spell” of knitting, and a tearful appeal to visit the shops in order to buy baby's clothes. A “getting supper spell” involved a general upheavalin the kitchen, where Becky would solemnly pour everything she could lay hands on into a large bowl and, after a long stir, tip the mixture into a frying-pan, “because Saul will have everything,