to allow Grand-Aunt to declare, “Elspeth, I wonder at you.  There was never a McGinnis stood more than five feet five, and I do not remember that Hendry escaped the family misfortune—­mind you, I know it’s no a fault—­of a squint.”  There would not have been those hours in the dining-room when life was lifted to a strange and interesting plane where the flesh became as thoughtful as the spirit, and each meeting of lips was as individual as an idea and as much a comment on life, and the pressing of a finger across the skin could be watched like the unfolding of a theory.

But those were the fair-weather uses of love.  It was in the foul weather she would have missed him most.  If this woman had not given her Richard she would have walked home from the hospital alone and wept by the unmade bed whose pillow was still dented by mother’s head; she would have had to go to the cemetery with only Mr. Mactavish James and Uncle John Watson from Glasgow, who would have said “Hush!” when she waved her hand at the coffin as it was lowered into the grave and cried, “Good-bye, my wee lamb!” Life was so terrible it would not be supportable without love.  She laid her hand on Marion’s where it lay on the table, and stuttered, “Oh, it was brave of you!”

The intimate contact was faintly disgusting to the other.  She answered impatiently, “Not brave at all; I loved him so much that I would have done anything rather than lose him.”

“You loved him—­even then?”

“In a sense they are as much to one then as they ever are.”

“Ah....”  Ellen continued to pat the other woman’s hand and looked up wonderingly into her eyes, and was dismayed to see there that this fondling meant nothing to her.  She was not ungrateful, but for such things her austerity had no use.  All that she wanted was that assurance for which she had already asked.  Ellen was proud, and she was a little hurt that the way in which she had proposed to pay the debt of gratitude was not acceptable, so she held up her hand and said coolly, “I’ll marry your son when you like, Mrs. Yaverland.”

The other said nothing more than “Thank you.”  Realising that she had said it even more than usually indifferently, she put out her hand towards Ellen in imitation of the girl’s own movement, but did it with so marked a lack of spontaneity that it must, as she instantly perceived, give an impression of insincerity.  “How I fail!” she thought, but not too sadly, for at any rate she had got her son what he wanted.  A man came and stood a little way behind her, looking here and there for someone whom he expected to find in the assembly, and she turned sharply to see if it were Richard; for always when he was away, if the shadows fell across her path or there came a knock at the door, she hoped that it was him.