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so, since that first year after your father was killed, or rather when the war ended; though for me the war
did
end when he was killed in 1915. I know it sounds weak and selfish. But I’ve tried to make up for it since, and to cancel out my own feelings.”
    â€œThat’s the trouble, Mother. All this abnegation and arid self-control! But it looks as though I am in for a course of it now. How else am I to carry on?”
    So the talk went on, between mother and daughter, neither of them able to express herself fully, or to bring under control the flood of emotions and disconnected memories released under the clash of words and events. The evening drew toward bed-time, and after Mary had inspected the gift sent that day from The Stores, and both she and Joan had had baths and sipped cups of cocoa and nibbled at biscuits, they parted for the night, having agreed to accept Dr. Batten’s invitation, concluding that nobody would be more surprised than he. Mary added, as they parted for the night, that she could barely remember what the doctor looked like. She faintly recollected a thin man in uniform, with a face heavily lined each side of a wide mouth, the eyes sunken under a lined brow, and lank hair. “He stooped,” she said, pausing with her hand on the door-knob, as though it were a handle to the past. “It looked so odd with a man in uniform.”
    â€œWell, you will see what time has done to him, Mother. But I must first finish off my last job for the Professor, before he goes off to America. That will take a few days. But we need a little time, surely, to pack our things?”
    They agreed, and parted. Mary noticed that the cat had followed Joan into her room, and was not turned out again.

Chapter Three

A Long-Standing Invitation
    Joan’s work for her Professor took a week, but during that time her mother got busy, arranging for the departure and an indefinite stay abroad. This activity was deliberately maintained to prevent her from worrying about Joan’s marriage and the threat to it. Mary thought John Boys rather an adorable person, with his childlike enthusiasms, his utter lack of self-consciousness, and his old-fashioned attitude toward women. He always made her feel frail and helpless, and she found that a relief from the part which she had forced herself to play in the lonely drama of her widowhood. For she never succeeded in disguising the fact that her life
was
lonely, in spite of her devotion to Joan, and her activities and good works locally and in London. It was as though she were conducting herself through a glass screen, or over the telephone. Everything, and everyone, stood at a slight remove from flesh and blood contact. She did not care to examine that matter more intimately.
    The cottage in the wood was left to the care of Milly, who would keep the place aired and clean, and could be depended upon. Nothing to worry about there. Mother and daughter found themselves in the boat-train at ten o’clock one calm morning in mid-December, rushing through Kent, too excited by travel-fever to be able to see what they were looking at through the windows of thecompartment. Winter sunshine touched the coloured landscape, flashing on oast-caps, ponds, and the wires in the hop gardens. Flights of rooks rose from the fields as the train disturbed them. The travellers looked furtively at the surface of the sea as the train ran alongside it through Folkestone Warren. But all was calm, even glassy, with the sun burnishing the water to blue steel, under the tempering of a slight mist.
    Both of them were quiet during the crossing. They walked the deck, their heads protected in silk handkerchiefs against the breeze. Gulls skated on air round the boat, darting down from time to time into the great blocks of glassy water thrown aside by the vessel. The Channel appeared to be empty, and both shores were soon lost behind the mist.
    At last, but sooner than they anticipated, the coast of