The doors of Michael’s and of Nicky’s rooms were always kept shut; Frances knew that, if she were to open the door on the other side of the corridor and look in, every thing in Nicky’s room would welcome her with tenderness even while it inflicted its unique and separate wound.  But Michael’s room was bare and silent.  He had cleared everything away out of her sight last year before he went.  The very books on the shelves repudiated her; reminded her that she had never understood him, that he had always escaped her.  His room kept his secret, and she felt afraid and abashed in it, knowing herself an intruder.  Presently all that was most precious in it would be taken from her and given over to a stranger whom he had never liked.

Her mind turned and fastened on one object—­the stiff, naked wooden chair standing in its place before the oak table by the window.  She remembered how she had come to Michael there and found him writing at his table, and how she had talked to him as though he had been a shirker and a coward.

She had borne Nicky’s death.  But she could not bear Michael’s.  She stood there in his room, staring, hypnotized by her memory.  She heard Dorothea come in and go out again.  And then Veronica came in.

She turned to Veronica to help her.

She clung to Veronica and was jealous of her.  Veronica had not come between her and Nicky as long as he was alive, but now that he was dead she came between them.  She came between her and Michael too.  Michael’s mind had always been beyond her; she could only reach it through Veronica and through Veronica’s secret.  Her mind clutched at Veronica’s secret, and flung it away as useless, and returned, clutching at it again.

It was as if Veronica held the souls of Michael and Nicholas in her hands.  She offered her the souls of her dead sons.  She was the mediator between her and their souls.

“I could bear it, Veronica, if I hadn’t made him go.  I came to him, here, in this room, and bullied him till he went.  I said horrible things to him—­that he must have remembered.

“He wasn’t like Nicky—­it was infinitely worse for him.  And I was cruel to him.  I had no pity.  I drove him out—­to be killed.

“And I simply cannot bear it.”

“But—­he didn’t go then.  He waited till—­till he was free.  If anybody could have made him, Nicky could.  But it wasn’t even Nicky.  It was himself.”

“If he’d been killed as Nicky was—­but to die like that, in the hospital—­of those horrible wounds.”

“He was leading a charge, just as Nicky was.  And you know he was happy, just as Nicky was.  Every line he’s written shows that he was happy.”

“It only shows that they were both full of life, that they loved their life and wanted to live.

“It’s no use, Ronny, you’re saying you know they’re there.  I don’t.  I’d give anything to believe it.  And yet it wouldn’t be a bit of good if I did.  I don’t want them all changed into something spiritual that I shouldn’t know if it was there.  I want their bodies with me just as they used to be.  I want to hear them and touch them, and see them come in in their old clothes.