“To see Nicky standing on the hearthrug with Timmy in his arms.  I want things like that, Ronny.  Even if you’re right, it’s all clean gone.”

Her lips tightened.

“I’m talking as if I was, the only one.  But I know it’s worse for you, Ronny.  I had them all those years.  And I’ve got Anthony.  You’ve had nothing but your poor three days.”

Veronica thought:  “How can I tell her that I’ve got more than she thinks?  It’s awful that I should have what she hasn’t.”  She was ashamed and beaten before this irreparable, mortal grief.

“And it’s worse,” Frances said, “for the wretched mothers whose sons haven’t fought.”

For her pride rose in her again—­the pride that uplifted her supernaturally when Nicky died.

“You mustn’t think I grudge them.  I don’t.  I don’t even grudge John.”

The silence of Michael’s room sank into them, it weighed on their hearts and they were afraid of each other’s voices.  Frances was glad when Dorothy came and they could begin their work there.

But Michael had not left them much to do.  They found his papers all in one drawer of his writing-table, sorted and packed and labelled, ready for Morton Ellis to take away.  One sealed envelope lay in a place by itself.  Frances thought:  “He didn’t want any of us to touch his things.”

Then she saw Veronica’s name on the sealed envelope.  She was glad when Veronica left them and went to her hospital.

And when she was gone she wanted her back again.

“I wish I hadn’t spoken that way to Veronica,” she said.

“She won’t mind.  She knows you couldn’t help it.”

“I could, Dorothy, if I wasn’t jealous of her.  I mean I’m jealous of her certainty.  If I had it, too, I shouldn’t be jealous.”

“She wants you to have it.  She’s trying to give it you.

“Mother—­how do we know she isn’t right?  Nicky said she was.  And Michael said Nicky was right.

“If it had been only Nicky—­he might have got it from Veronica.  But Michael never got things from anybody.  And you do know things in queer ways.  Even I do.  At least I did once—­when I was in prison.  I knew something tremendous was going to happen.  I saw it, or felt it, or something.  I won’t swear I knew it was the War.  I don’t suppose I did.  But I knew Frank was all mixed up with it.  And it was the most awfully real thing.  You couldn’t go back on it, or get behind it.  It was as if I’d seen that he and Lawrence and Nicky and Michael and all of them would die in it to save the whole world.  Like Christ, only that they really did die and the whole world was saved.  There was nothing futile about it.”

“Well—?”

“Well, they might see their real thing the same way—­in a flash.  Aren’t they a thousand times more likely to know than we are?  What right have we—­sitting here safe—­to say it isn’t when they say it is?”