“Well, you know,” said Mary after a pause, “I really must be getting along.”

“Oh, must you?” Lily’s face fell. “I suppose you’re very busy.”

“I’ve got a good deal to do over Christmas. The children will both be at home.”

She paused at the door; added:

“You know, Lily, we should be awfully glad to see you if you cared to come round any time.”

Lily smiled:

“It’s very kind of you. But I always feel you’ve so much to do.”

“I’m afraid my house is rather a bear-garden. But I tell you what—you’ve never been to the Gallery, have you? Do come one day, soon. The light’s almost gone at four, and we can have a quiet cup of tea all to ourselves without being disturbed. I’ve at last managed to get the place fairly decently heated.”

“I should love to.”

“Well, don’t forget. Here’s the address.”

“I’ll come as soon as Christmas is over.”

“Well, good-bye. Thank you so much for my tea.”

“Thank you for coming.”

“Good-bye, Lily.”

“Good-bye, Mary.”

They kissed.

*   *   *

Riding home on her bus, Mary had Lily’s figure still before her—the thin, pale, blonde woman bravely smiling at the door of her lonely flat. Poor old Lily. What would she do at Christmas?

That afternoon she’d suddenly had an idea. Why not a show of Richard’s and Lily’s water-colours at the Gallery? People still bought that sort of 1910 stuff, and it’d make a change. But no, most likely Lily wouldn’t hear of it. She wouldn’t want to sell. Better not to mention the subject.

It was queer, but to-day she kept thinking of Desmond. Sometimes she forgot him for weeks on end. Perhaps I’m not well, Mary thought. She’d never felt better. Yes, deep down in her bones she felt a power. She was powerful and old. The Future didn’t worry her, and she had done with the Past. The Past couldn’t hurt her now. And yet, thinking of it all—thinking of Dick and of Father and Mother and of Desmond—of all that had happened, there seemed so incredibly much and everything so complicated and so difficult that if, when she was a girl of fifteen, somebody had brought her a book and said: Look. That’s what you’ve got in front of you, she’d have felt like an examination candidate confronted with a preposterous schedule: But I can’t possibly manage all that! And yet it had been managed, down to the very last item; and, after all, it had been easy and not specially strange or exciting. And how soon it was over!

*   *   *

“Mary as Queen Victoria,” shouted everybody that evening at the Gowers’, after the concert.

“But you must all have seen it.”

“We all want to see it again.”