Blind I must have been, thought Sophia, stepping out again into the mystery of the evening. Blind, and a coward, but now I’ve got Nydia again and poetry, and I don’t care. I’m not afraid or blind any more.

So when the next night came, and the three were in the cottage together for the last time, waiting for Juan’s car to fetch the boys, and for Mr Cross’s van to carry off Sophia and her few possessions to her new room, she was not so miserable as she had feared to be.

Nydia was on the mantelpiece in a shrine of yellow roses and dark red carnations which Harry had brought for Sophia, and she stood for so much that every time Sophia glanced at her, she felt happier.

The boys were pleased to see Nydia again.

‘Hullo! there’s Nydia,’ said Francis interestedly, speaking to Sophia without constraint for the first time in ten days. ‘Where did you get her?’

‘At a little second-hand shop in Elizabeth Street, for five bob.’

‘North must have sold her,’ said Harry, coming downstairs with his two battered suitcases, and carefully not treading on the broken stair, which, of course, they had never had mended. He was rather pensive because Belinha had gone that morning to Paris; but his heart was far from being broken.

‘I expect she did. I’m sure she only bought her to spite me. Father knew I liked Nydia, and he must have told North, and the old cow sold her again as soon as she’d bought her, I expect. Talking of old cows,’ she added, ‘how’s Juan’s aunt taking it?’

Harry and Francis looked relieved at this sign of returning interest and cheerfulness on the part of their sister. Harry said with animation, ‘Oh, old Juan had a ghastly row with her and told her where she got off. She howled for hours, he said.’

Sophia said nothing.

Harry glanced at Francis.

‘My dear,’ said Francis, putting his hands on her shoulders, ‘you don’t mind awfully, do you? Things are just the same, you know. It won’t make any difference to our caring about each other because we aren’t all living together, and we’ll see each other very often, and ring each other up, and have parties – nice gatherings, I mean’ (Sophia had begun to laugh) ‘and everything will be all right.’

‘Oh, if only it would!’ she said longingly.

‘Well, I’m sure it will – that is, if the old fools will only keep their noses out of it, curse them.’

‘Aunt Grace,’ said Harry, ‘rang up this morning to know if we still loved each other.’

‘God, she didn’t!’

‘She did.’

‘She’s the worst of the lot, you know.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Uncle Preston is the worst, I think. He enjoys it all so.’

‘I think Aunt Maxine is the worst,’ said Sophia pensively, twiddling a rose.

‘And yet one can’t help feeling sorry for them.’

‘I know. They’ve never had a chance somehow, have they?’