Lily thought a great deal about this. Finally, she knelt down and prayed that Richard might appear to her. She made this prayer for several nights. During the earlier part of the War, when Richard was still alive, she had prayed regularly for his safety. Nearly everybody prayed then. But since his death she had said a prayer only occasionally, or in church. Several days passed. And then one evening, as she was coming up the staircase from the hall to dress for dinner, she saw Richard standing in front of her. It was getting rather dark, and he appeared, strangely distinct, within the archway of the corridor. He was as she had last seen him, on his last leave, a slightly bowed figure in the British Warm and frayed tunic, his mild eyes wrinkled like his father’s, but prematurely, with his deeply lined forehead and large fair moustache. There he was. Then he was gone. Lily, who had paused for a moment on the top step of the staircase, walked dully past the place where she had seen him, and along the corridor, down to her room. For days she couldn’t think clearly about what had happened. She attempted different moods, tried to feel that this was a sign, that at last she was calm, she was happy. But she wasn’t. Doubts wearied her. She couldn’t believe. She felt that what she had seen was a creation of her own will. She had done something base in wishing to create it. Then she tried to put it all out of her mind. She never prayed to see Richard again.

Yes, I’m terribly tired, thought Lily. I’m absolutely worn out. I must stop worrying so much. I’ve got nothing to worry about now. This idea was as painful to her as the others. Her eyes blurred again. Is this all my share of life, she thought? Gone? Twelve years of happiness; paid for more than twelve times over in agonies of waiting during those awful months, expecting always the War Office telegram which came at last. Killed in Action. Lily was standing in front of the looking-glass.

Her lips trembled; she was frog-faced, half smiling. Somebody knocked at the door. She sighed deeply. Her face drew down at the mouth and eyes. She looked five years older.

“Come in,” she sighed aloud.

She picked up her hat from the dressing-table and put it on, arranging the little veil. The hat made her eyes look extraordinarily lost and tragic. She could still occasionally feel the pathos of the sight of herself in black—a small restrained figure beside which always stood, in her imagination, the charming fresh image of a girl in spreading cream skirts and a large hat with flowers, puffy-sleeved; herself as a young mother. The knocking, discreetly insistent, was repeated. Lily frowned and called sharply: “Come in.”