“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins, still as though she were afraid of being overheard.  “Not just sit here and say How wonderful, and then go home to Hampstead without having put out a finger—­go home just as usual and see about the dinner and the fish just as we’ve been doing for years and years and will go on doing for years and years.  In fact,” said Mrs. Wilkins, flushing to the roots of her hair, for the sound of what she was saying, of what was coming pouring out, frightened her, and yet she couldn’t stop, “I see no end to it.  There is no end to it.  So that there ought to be a break, there ought to be intervals—­in everybody’s interests.  Why, it would really be being unselfish to go away and be happy for a little, because we would come back so much nicer.  You see, after a bit everybody needs a holiday.”

“But—­how do you mean, get it?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Take it,” said Mrs. Wilkins.

“Take it?”

“Rent it.  Hire it.  Have it.”

“But—­do you mean you and I?”

“Yes.  Between us.  Share.  Then it would only cost half, and you look so—­you look exactly as if you wanted it just as much as I do—­as if you ought to have a rest—­have something happy happen to you.”

“Why, but we don’t know each other.”

“But just think how well we would if we went away together for a month!  And I’ve saved for a rainy day—­look at it—­”

“She is unbalanced,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot; yet she felt strangely stirred.

“Think of getting away for a whole month—­from everything—­to heaven—­”

“She shouldn’t say things like that,” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot.  “The vicar—­” Yet she felt strangely stirred.  It would indeed be wonderful to have a rest, a cessation.

Habit, however, steadied her again; and years of intercourse with the poor made her say, with the slight though sympathetic superiority of the explainer, “But then, you see, heaven isn’t somewhere else.  It is here and now.  We are told so.”

She became very earnest, just as she did when trying patiently to help and enlighten the poor.  “Heaven is within us,” she said in her gentle low voice.  “We are told that on the very highest authority.  And you know the lines about the kindred points, don’t you—­”

“Oh yes, I know them,” interrupted Mrs. Wilkins impatiently.

“The kindred points of heaven and home,” continued Mrs. Arbuthnot, who was used to finishing her sentences.  “Heaven is in our home.”

“It isn’t,” said Mrs. Wilkins, again surprisingly.

Mrs. Arbuthnot was taken aback.  Then she said gently, “Oh, but it is.  It is there if we choose, if we make it.”

“I do choose, and I do make it, and it isn’t,” said Mrs. Wilkins.