Providence has a curious way of letting two lives run along, each apparently independent of the other.  Parallel lines they seem, hopeless of meeting.  Converging lines really, destined, through long ages, by every deed that has been done to meet at a certain point and there fuse.

Edith had left Mabel, but not to go to Lethway.  When nothing else remained that way was open.  She no longer felt any horror—­only a great distaste.  But two weeks found her at her limit.  She, who had rarely had more than just enough, now had nothing.

And no glory of sacrifice upheld her.  She no longer believed that by removing the burden of her support she could save Mabel.  It was clear that Mabel would not be saved.  To go back and live on her, under the circumstances, was but a degree removed from the other thing that confronted her.

There is just a chance that, had she not known the boy, she would have killed herself.  But again the curious change he had worked in her manifested itself.  He thought suicide a wicked thing.

“I take it like this,” he had said in his eager way:  “life’s a thing that’s given us for some purpose.  Maybe the purpose gets clouded—­I’m afraid I’m an awful duffer at saying what I mean.  But we’ve got to work it out, do you see?  Or—­or the whole scheme is upset.”

It had seemed very clear then.

Then, on a day when the rare sun made even the rusty silk hats of clerks on tops of omnibuses to gleam, when the traffic glittered on the streets and the windows of silversmiths’ shops shone painful to the eye, she met Lethway again.

The sun had made her reckless.  Since the boy was gone life was wretchedness, but she clung to it.  She had given up all hope of Cecil’s return, and what she became mattered to no one else.

Perhaps, more than anything else, she craved companionship.  In all her crowded young life she had never before been alone.  Companionship and kindness.  She would have followed to heel, like a dog, for a kind word.

Then she met Lethway.  They walked through the park.  When he left her her once clear, careless glance had a suggestion of furtiveness in it.

That afternoon she packed her trunk and sent it to an address he had given her.  In her packing she came across the stick of cold cream, still in the pocket of the middy blouse.  She flung it, as hard as she could, across the room.

She paid her bill with money Lethway had given her.  She had exactly a sixpence of her own.  She found herself in Trafalgar Square late in the afternoon.  The great enlisting posters there caught her eye, filled her with bitterness.

“Your king and your country need you,” she read.  She had needed the boy, too, but this vast and impersonal thing, his mother country, had taken him from her—­taken him and lost him.  She wanted to stand by the poster and cry to the passing women to hold their men back.  As she now knew she hated Lethway, she hated England.