In the hall there was an old woman, dressed in a black dress patterned with big red flowers.  She was knitting.  Her stiff skirts spread out in angular folds round her.  Jay knew she was a fellow-ghost, because their eyes met.

Jay felt swallowed up by the silence.  She could not speak, even to think, she felt, would be too noisy.  The stiff skirt of the old lady made no rustle, the knitting needles made no click.  But Jay could see that she was counting.  The House seemed to be full of unmoving time.  Outside the rain began to fall, and that grey sound enclosed the silence of the House.

After a very long time Jay spoke.  “Where is my Friend?” she asked.

“Gone to the War,” answered the old woman.

“There is no War in this world,” said Jay.

“On the contrary,” the fellow-ghost replied, “war is, even here, where Time is not.  War is like air, in every house, in every land, on every sea.  For ever.”

Between her sentences she counted.  Unpausing numbers moved her lips.

“On these shores,” she said, “time and Life and the sea go up and down.  Eternity has no logic.  There are no reasons, there is no explanation.  But there is always War.  There are fighting sea men in the caves on the beach.  Haven’t you seen them, the dark sea people?  Haven’t you heard their high voices that were tuned to cut through the voice of the sea?  Haven’t you found their very wide, long-toed footprints in the sand?  Have you walked blind through this world?”

“No,” said Jay, “I remember.  The women decorate their hair with seaweed, pink and green.  I have watched them catch fish with their hands.  I have watched them put their babies to play in the pools among the rocks....”

“On the cliffs,” said the fellow-ghost, “men clad in armour share the camps of the Englishmen who fought at Cressy, and at Waterloo, and at the Marne.  On these seas the most ancient pirates sing and laugh in chorus with Nelson’s drowned sailors, and with men from the North Sea, men whose mothers still cry in the night for them.  Did you think there was any seniority in Eternity?”

“But I don’t understand,” said Jay.  “Time seems to leave itself behind so quickly....”

“There is nothing to understand,” said the old woman.  “There is no explanation.  Time does not move.  Men move.”  The noise of the rain seemed to wash out everything but remembrance, and there was no feeling in Jay but a terrible longing to have her Secret Friend with her again, and that long secret childhood of theirs, and to wipe out half her days and all her knowledge, and to hear once more those songs upon the sands of the cove, and to feel the tingling ground of the sunny hills.

“My Friend has never forsaken me before,” she said.

She felt a hand press her hand, and she met the eyes of little Mrs. Love.

“Yo’re a mousey sort of kid,” said Mrs. Love, “sittin’ there as if you was in church.  Shall we go ‘ome?  The rine’s gettin’ worse an’ worse, an’ it’s no good wytin’.  I’ll see you ’ome.”