‘Nothing makes me perspire,’ said Mary.  As she bumped the chair under the porch she straightened her long back.  The exertion had given her a colour, and the wind had loosened a wisp of hair across her forehead.  Miss Fowler glanced at her.

‘What do you ever think of, Mary?’ she demanded suddenly.

’Oh, Wynn says he wants another three pairs of stockings—­as thick as we can make them.’

’Yes.  But I mean the things that women think about.  Here you are, more than forty—­’

‘Forty-four,’ said truthful Mary.

‘Well?’

‘Well?’ Mary offered Miss Fowler her shoulder as usual.

‘And you’ve been with me ten years now.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Mary.  ’Wynn was eleven when he came.  He’s twenty now, and I came two years before that.  It must be eleven.’

’Eleven!  And you’ve never told me anything that matters in all that while.  Looking back, it seems to me that I’ve done all the talking.’

’I’m afraid I’m not much of a conversationalist.  As Wynn says, I haven’t the mind.  Let me take your hat.’

Miss Fowler, moving stiffly from the hip, stamped her rubber-tipped stick on the tiled hall floor.  ’Mary, aren’t you anything except a companion?  Would you ever have been anything except a companion?’

Mary hung up the garden hat on its proper peg.  ‘No,’ she said after consideration.  ’I don’t imagine I ever should.  But I’ve no imagination, I’m afraid.’

She fetched Miss Fowler her eleven-o’clock glass of Contrexeville.

That was the wet December when it rained six inches to the month, and the women went abroad as little as might be.  Wynn’s flying chariot visited them several times, and for two mornings (he had warned her by postcard) Mary heard the thresh of his propellers at dawn.  The second time she ran to the window, and stared at the whitening sky.  A little blur passed overhead.  She lifted her lean arms towards it.

That evening at six o’clock there came an announcement in an official envelope that Second Lieutenant W. Fowler had been killed during a trial flight.  Death was instantaneous.  She read it and carried it to Miss Fowler.

‘I never expected anything else,’ said Miss Fowler; ’but I’m sorry it happened before he had done anything.’

The room was whirling round Mary Postgate, but she found herself quite steady in the midst of it.

‘Yes,’ she said.  ’It’s a great pity he didn’t die in action after he had killed somebody.’

‘He was killed instantly.  That’s one comfort,’ Miss Fowler went on.

’But Wynn says the shock of a fall kills a man at once—­whatever happens to the tanks,’ quoted Mary.

The room was coming to rest now.  She heard Miss Fowler say impatiently, ‘But why can’t we cry, Mary?’ and herself replying, ’There’s nothing to cry for.  He has done his duty as much as Mrs. Grant’s son did.’