“Mother—­it mustn’t happen again.  She can’t come here again.”

She grew stern.  “Richard, you must say nothing to Roger.  Nor to her.  She’s his love and pride.  So far as he’s concerned, she’s a better woman than I am.  I never put my love and pride in his life.  If you speak to either of them you will ... add to my already heavy guilt.  Besides ... how can she hurt Ellen and me?  She’s very weak.  We’re very strong.”

“But, mother, you saw what she was.”

“More than you did.  She’s had a child not long since.”

“A child?” He stared at her curiously, reverently.  “How do you know?”

“Some people get a brown stain on their face when they’re having a baby, and afterwards it lingers on.  I had it with you.  Not with Roger.  She has it now.”  She slowly drew her fingers over her face, her eyes wide in wonder.  “It’s a queer thing, birth....”

Ellen tingled with shame because such things were spoken of aloud, by someone old.  But Richard muttered huskily:  “I wonder what the story is....”

“Something horrible.  She’s come from a good home.  Her teeth were well looked after when she was a girl.  That hair took some conscientious torturing to make it what it is.  She was caught, I suppose, by her love of beauty.  Did you ever hear anything more pathetic than her name—­Poppy Alicante?”

“I don’t see anything more in it than it’s an obvious lie.”

“It was much more than that.  Think of her as a little girl going with her mother into a greengrocer’s and hearing about Alicante grapes, and asking what Alicante was, and being told it was in Spain, and making the most lovely pictures of it in her mind and keeping them there ever since.  Oh, she’s a poor, beauty-loving thing.  That’s how the handsome sailor picked her up in Chatham High Street on Saturday night.”

“No doubt you’re right,” he said, looking into the fire.

“And she hated giving up the child.  That’s why she snarls at Roger.  Until she gets another she’ll be famished.  It was taken over, I expect, by a married sister or brother who’ve got no children of their own.  She’s not allowed to see it now.  Not since she left the nice place that was found for her after she’d got over her trouble.  Twenty pounds a year—­because of her lost character; and for the same reason rather more work than the rest of the servants, who all found out about it.  So she ran away.”

He interrupted her:  “Supposing all that’s true.  And I know it is.  It’s like you, mother, to read from a patch of brown skin on a woman’s face things that other people would have found out only by searching registry records and asking the police.  It’s like the way you always turned your back on the barometer and read the sky for news of the weather.  You’re an old peasant woman under your skin, mother.”  His voice was hazed with delight.  He had forgotten the moment in the timeless joy of his love for her.  Ellen, in the shadows, stirred and coughed.  He broke out again:  “Well, supposing all that’s true!  Are you going to be honest and be as clear-sighted about what happened after she ran away?  Mother, think of the things that have been done to her, think of the things she’s seen!”