“She should go,” he declared, with all the brisk finality born of thirty years in the hardware business. “She’s doing no good here – a cure’s out of the question. It would be the kindest thing of all to send her back.”

The three women looked at him. They were all together in the big, comfortable apartment: the noise of traffic along Commonwealth Avenue, muted by double windows, rose to them faintly. It was a protected world, good to stay in, harsh to leave. If Esther were to be thrust out of it, the women at least would not be able to rest so easy; for those who were allowed to stay thus encushioned must feel, as executioners, doubly guilty, doubly smug.

Mrs Forbes sighed. “It seems such a terrible idea, to send her back to that village. I think she should stay here in America.” She looked across at Mrs Bannister. “She needn’t stay right here, of course. There must be all sorts of homes and hospitals.”

“M’m,” said Mrs Bannister.

“She can’t stay here,” said Paul Marchant. “This is a private apartment – you don’t want to turn it into an institution.” He paused. “And institutions – the real kind – cost money.”

Mrs Tempest, small and bustling, took that one up. “Money shouldn’t count at all. The girl’s helpless – she’s got to be protected. You can’t measure a thing like that in dollar bills.”

Marchant smiled ironically. He was about to hazard his guess that her late husband, the bank manager, must be spinning in his grave right now, but he suppressed the remark. With women, you never quite knew what was funny and what was not … Instead he said: “Belle’s not made of money, all the same. You’ve got to measure it up in dollars, to a certain extent.”

“It’s a terrible thought, to send her back,” said Mrs Forbes, continuing to speak for her conscience. “Aren’t there funds or organizations that could help out? How about Henry Ford?”

“He died,” said Paul Marchant.

“I mean, didn’t he leave money for things like this? Or was it Andrew Mellon?”

Mrs Bannister broke her long silence. “I took the thing on,” she said, with quiet determination. “I’m not going to shrug it off on to other people, just when it gets difficult.”

“But you took it on when it seemed likely that she could be cured,” objected Paul Marchant.

“Then it’s worse still, now,” said Mrs Bannister. But she did not elaborate. She was thinking.

She was thinking of the desperate disappointment which the doctors’ reports had brought, and of how best she could equate the future with her hopes and with her conscience. As had happened on the ship, she was aware all the time of Esther, hidden somewhere within the apartment: she knew exactly how the girl would be looking at this moment, sitting in an armchair in her small room, with its simplified furniture and its lack of hazard. The bell-push was close under her hand, the way to the bathroom had been memorized for many weeks past, the world for her was blessedly at peace: this day was just like another day, with no more shocks, no more crude manipulation.