Her harried, uneasy look caused Mrs. Wilton to ask compassionately:  “Are you much worried by the police?”

“Oh, the police!  Why don’t they leave us alone?  You never know who comes to see you.  Why don’t they leave me alone?  I’m a good woman.  I only think.  What I do is no harm to any one.” . . .

She continued in an uneven querulous voice, always rubbing her hands together nervously.  She seemed to the visitor to be talking at random, just gabbling, like children do sometimes before they fall asleep.

“I wanted to explain——­” hesitated Mrs. Wilton.

But the woman, with her head pressed close against the back of the chair, was staring beyond her at the wall.  Her face had lost whatever little expression it had; it was blank and stupid.  When she spoke it was very slowly and her voice was guttural.

“Can’t you see him?  It seems strange to me that you can’t see him.  He is so near you.  He is passing his arm round your shoulders.”

This was a frequent gesture of Hugh’s.  And indeed at that moment she felt that somebody was very near her, bending over her.  She was enveloped in tenderness.  Only a very thin veil, she felt, prevented her from seeing.  But the woman saw.  She was describing Hugh minutely, even the little things like the burn on his right hand.

“Is he happy?  Oh, ask him does he love me?”

The result was so far beyond anything she had hoped for that she was stunned.  She could only stammer the first thing that came into her head.  “Does he love me?”

“He loves you.  He won’t answer, but he loves you.  He wants me to make you see him; he is disappointed, I think, because I can’t.  But I can’t unless you do it yourself.”

After a while she said: 

“I think you will see him again.  You think of nothing else.  He is very close to us now.”

Then she collapsed, and fell into a heavy sleep and lay there motionless, hardly breathing.  Mrs. Wilton put some notes on the table and stole out on tip-toe.

* * * * *

She seemed to remember that downstairs in the dark shop the dealer with the waxen face detained her to show some old silver and jewelry and such like.  But she did not come to herself, she had no precise recollection of anything, till she found herself entering a church near Portland Place.  It was an unlikely act in her normal moments.  Why did she go in there?  She acted like one walking in her sleep.

The church was old and dim, with high black pews.  There was nobody there.  Mrs. Wilton sat down in one of the pews and bent forward with her face in her hands.

After a few minutes she saw that a soldier had come in noiselessly and placed himself about half-a-dozen rows ahead of her.  He never turned round; but presently she was struck by something familiar in the figure.  First she thought vaguely that the soldier looked like her Hugh.  Then, when he put up his hand, she saw who it was.