Both knew she had nothing but kind intention, as in fact the betrayal of her own secret proved; but as Jenny could not keep out of her voice the slightest tinge of complacent pity, so Emmy could not accept anything so intolerable as pity.

“Thanks,” she said in perfunctory refusal; “but you can do what you like.  Just what you like.”  She was implacable.  She was drying the basin, her face hidden.  “I’m not going to take your leavings.”  At that her voice quivered and had again that thread of roughness in it which had been there earlier.  “Not likely!”

“Well, I can’t help it, can I!” cried Jenny, out of patience.  “If he likes me best.  If he won’t come to you.  I mean, if I say I won’t go out with him—­will that put him on to you or send him off altogether?  Em, do be sensible.  Really, I never knew.  Never dreamt of it.  I’ve never wanted him.  It’s not as though he’d whistled and I’d gone trotting after him.  Em!  You get so ratty about—­”

“Superior!” cried Emmy, gaspingly.  “Look down on me!” She was for an instant hysterical, speaking loudly and weepingly.  Then she was close against Jenny; and they were holding each other tightly, while Emmy’s dreadful quiet sobs shook both of them to the heart.  And Jenny, above her sister’s shoulder, could see through the window the darkness that lay without; and her eyes grew tender at an unbidden thought, which made her try to force herself to see through the darkness, as though she were sending a speechless message to the unknown.  Then, feeling Emmy still sobbing in her arms, she looked down, laying her face against her sister’s face.  A little contemptuous smile appeared in her eyes, and her brow furrowed.  Well, Emmy could cry. She couldn’t.  She didn’t want to cry.  She wanted to go out in the darkness that so pleasantly enwrapped the earth, back to the stir and glitter of life somewhere beyond.  Abruptly Jenny sighed.  Her vision had been far different from this scene.  It had carried her over land and sea right into an unexplored realm where there was wild laughter and noise, where hearts broke tragically and women in the hour of ruin turned triumphant eyes to the glory of life, and where blinding streaming lights and scintillating colours made everything seem different, made it seem romantic, rapturous, indescribable.  From that vision back to the cupboard-like house in Kennington Park, and stodgy Alf Rylett, and supper of stew and bread and butter pudding, and Pa, and this little sobbing figure in her arms, was an incongruous flight.  It made Jenny’s mouth twist in a smile so painful that it was almost a grimace.

“Oh lor!” she said again, under her breath, as she had said it earlier. “What a life!”

CHAPTER II:  THE TREAT

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