trunk.  And when she saw them lying there she had a moment of remorse.  After all, they had been part of herself, part of her throbbing, sensuous womanhood, warmed once by her body.  It wasn’t their fault, poor things, any more than hers, if they had been futile and unfit.  She shut the lid down on them gently, and it was as if she buried them gently out of her sight.  She could afford to forgive them, for she knew that there was no futility nor unfitness in her.  Deep down in her heart she knew it.

She sat on the trunk in the attitude of one waiting, waiting in the utter stillness of assurance.  She could afford to wait.  All her being was still, all its secret impulses appeased by the slow and orderly movements of her hands.

Suddenly she started up and listened.  She heard out on the road the sound of wheels, and of hoofs that struck together.  And she frowned.  She thought, He might as well have called today, if he’s passing.

The clanking ceased, the wheels slowed down, and Mary’s peaceful heart moved violently in her breast.  The trap drew up at the Vicarage gate.

She went over to the window, the small, shy gable window that looked on to the road.  She saw her sister standing in the trap and Rowcliffe beneath her, standing in the road and holding out his hand.  She saw the two faces, the man’s face looking up, the woman’s face looking down, both smiling.

And Mary’s heart drew itself together in her breast.  Through her shut lips her sister’s name forced itself almost audibly.

“Gwen-da!”

* * * * *

Suddenly she shivered.  A cold wind blew through the open window.  Yet she did not move to shut it out.  To have interfered with the attic window would have been a breach of compact, an unholy invasion of her sister’s rights.  For the attic, the smallest, the coldest, the darkest and most thoroughly uncomfortable room in the whole house, was Gwenda’s, made over to her in the Vicar’s magnanimity, by way of compensation for the necessity that forced her to share her room with Alice.  As the attic was used for storing trunks and lumber, only two square yards of floor could be spared for Gwenda.  But the two square yards, cleared, and covered with a strip of old carpet, and furnished with a little table and one chair; the wall-space by the window with its hanging bookcase; the window itself and the corner fireplace near it were hers beyond division and dispute.  Nobody wanted them.

And as Mary from among the boxes looked toward her sister’s territory, her small, brooding face took on such sadness as good women feel in contemplating a character inscrutable and unlike their own.  Mary was sorry for Gwenda because of her inscrutability and unlikeness.

Then, thinking of Gwenda, Mary smiled.  The smile began in pity for her sister and ended in a nameless, secret satisfaction.  Not for a moment did Mary suspect its source.  It seemed to her one with her sense of her own goodness.