Their voices were so warm and intimate with love that they might have been talking of a newborn baby. Gerald’s old two-seater, which he’d turned over to Tommy when he got the Bentley. And within a week came the smash. The doctor said that if he’d lived he’d have been a cripple. It was impossible to think of Gerald as a cripple. It made Anne shudder. She’d sometimes felt a sort of hatred of his red beefy health. He was strong and stupid like an animal. And like an animal he had been suddenly and stupidly killed, with a pipe in his mouth, travelling at seventy miles an hour. She’d never forget how Tommy had come to her, that afternoon, straight from the hospital. He had seemed quite dazed. He had to keep telling her exactly what had happened.

“You know, Anne,” he kept repeating, “at first I didn’t recognise him at all. It might have been a stranger.”

And through all her horror—strange, remorseless, as it seemed—she’d felt a curious, new joy, growing up swiftly and secretly in the darkness of her heart. Gerald had done this for her. At last. Within a week of the funeral she’d told Tommy that she loved him.

How queer to think that people could say, almost certainly did say, that she was marrying Tommy for his money. Now they would be rich. Gerald had had everything—Cambridge, holidays at Monte Carlo, money for actresses. And now it would be Tommy’s. But all that was merely a joke, so long as Tommy never believed it. And he never shall believe it, Anne promised him.

“Well, here we are.”

Edward had opened the garden gates. Swinging on them like an urchin, he waved his hat to Maurice and Tommy as they drove past and round the sundial to the front door. Maurice swerved too sharply, crushing a bit of turf from the corner of the grass with his wheel.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said to Tommy, jumping out. “I’ve spoilt your lovely lawn.”

The others followed stiffly, stretching themselves. Gathered in the shelter of the porch. Edward, having closed the gates, came bounding across the garden towards them.

“How incredible this is,” he said to Mary, “I feel as if I’d just arrived for the Christmas holidays.”

“Why,” asked Pamela, “have you been here before?”

“It was some time ago.” Edward grinned.

“Ring the bell, Tommy,” said Maurice.

Tommy rather solemnly advanced and rang the bell. They waited. Now that the engines of the cars were stopped, there was a deathly silence. You could hear the trees dripping in the park.

“No one at home,” said Edward.

“It’s awfully early,” said Maurice, as though apologising to some one. Curiously enough, none of them had fully realised this. They looked at each other guiltily.

“I don’t suppose anybody’s up yet,” said Margaret.