‘Would that account for it?’ Miss Henschil shook from head to foot.

’Absolutely.  I don’t care who you ask!  You never imagined the thing.  It was laid on you.  It happened on earth to you!  Quick, Mr. Conroy, she’s too heavy for me!  I’ll get the flask.’

Miss Henschil leaned forward and collapsed, as Conroy told her afterwards, like a factory chimney.  She came out of her swoon with teeth that chattered on the cup.

‘No—­no,’ she said, gulping.  ‘It’s not hysterics.  Yo’ see I’ve no call to hev ’em any more.  No call—­no reason whatever.  God be praised!  Can’t yo’ feel I’m a right woman now?’

‘Stop hugging me!’ said Nurse Blaber.  ’You don’t know your strength.  Finish the brandy and water.  It’s perfectly reasonable, and I’ll lay long odds Mr. Conroy’s case is something of the same.  I’ve been thinking—­’

‘I wonder—­’ said Conroy, and pushed the girl back as she swayed again.

Nurse Blaber smoothed her pale hair.  ’Yes.  Your trouble, or something like it, happened somewhere on earth or sea to the mother who bore you.  Ask her, child.  Ask her and be done with it once for all.’

‘I will,’ said Conroy....  ‘There ought to be—­’ He opened his bag and hunted breathlessly.

‘Bless you!  Oh, God bless you, Nursey!’ Miss Henschil was sobbing.  ’You don’t know what this means to me.  It takes it all off—­from the beginning.’

‘But doesn’t it make any difference to you now?’ the nurse asked curiously.  ‘Now that you’re rightfully a woman?’

Conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard.  Miss Henschil stared across, and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her.  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said.  ’But it hasn’t changed anything.  I want Toots. He has never been out of his mind in his life—­except over silly me.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Conroy, stooping under the lamp, Bradshaw in hand.  ’If I change at Templecombe—­for Bristol (Bristol—­Hereford—­yes)—­I can be with mother for breakfast in her room and find out.’

‘Quick, then,’ said Nurse Blaber.  ’We’ve passed Gillingham quite a while.  You’d better take some of our sandwiches.’  She went out to get them.  Conroy and Miss Henschil would have danced, but there is no room for giants in a South-Western compartment.

’Good-bye, good luck, lad.  Eh, but you’ve changed already—­like me.  Send a wire to our hotel as soon as you’re sure,’ said Miss Henschil.  ’What should I have done without you?’

‘Or I?’ said Conroy.  ‘But it’s Nurse that’s saving us really.’

‘Then thank her,’ said Miss Henschil, looking straight at him.  ’Yes, I would.  She’d like it.’

When Nurse Blaber came back after the parting at Templecombe her nose and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great light even while she sniffed over The Cloister and the Hearth.

Miss Henschil, deep in a house furnisher’s catalogue, did not speak for twenty minutes.  Then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and servants’ sheets, ‘But why should our times have been the same, Nursey?’