‘What things people say!’ she exclaimed.

‘I guess you’ve stood it very well,’ he remarked, gazing at her, as with quick, sure movements of her gracile hands she poured out the tea.

‘Ah!’ she murmured, flushing, ’they sent me to bed.  I have only just got up.’

‘I know exactly when you went to bed,’ he smiled.

His tone filled her with satisfaction.  She had hoped and expected that he would behave naturally, that he would not adopt the desolating attitude of gloom prescribed by convention for sympathisers with the bereaved; and she was not disappointed.  He spoke with an easy and cheerful sincerity, and she was exquisitely conscious of the flattery implied in that simple, direct candour which seemed to say to her, ’You and I have no need of convention—­we understand each other.’  Perhaps never in her life, not even in the wonderful felicities of girlhood, had Leonora been more peacefully content than during those moments of calm succeeding stress, as she met Arthur’s eyes in the intimacy of a fraternal confidence.  The large room was so tranquil, the curtains so white, and the sunlight so benignant in the caress of its amber horizontal rays.  Rose lay asleep upstairs, Ethel and Millicent were at Oldcastle, John would not return for two hours; and she and Arthur were alone together in the middle of the long quiet chamber, talking quietly.  She was happy.  She had no fear, neither for herself nor for him.  As innocent as Rose, and more innocent than Ethel, she now regarded the feverish experience of the dance as accidental, a thing to be forgotten, an episode of which the repetition was merely to be avoided; Death and the fear of Death had come suddenly and written over its record in the page of existence.  Her present sanity and calmness and mild bliss and self-control—­these were to last, these were the real symptoms of her condition, and of Arthur’s condition.  No!  The memory of the ball did not trouble her; it had not troubled her since she awoke after the sedative.  She had entered the drawing-room without a qualm, and the instant of their meeting, anticipated on the previous night as much in terror as in joy, had passed equably and serenely.  Relying on his strength, and exulting in her own, she had given him her hand, and he had taken it, and that was all.  She knew her native force.  She knew that she had the precious and rare gift of common sense, and she was perfectly convinced that this common sense, which had never long deserted her in the past, could never permanently desert her in the future.  She imagined that nothing was stronger than common sense; she had small suspicion that in their noblest hours men and women have invariably despised common sense, and trampled it underfoot as the most contemptible of human attributes.  Therefore she was content and unalarmed.  And she found pleasure even in trifles, as, for example, that the maid had set two cups-and-saucers and two only; the duality