After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said: 

“Give me a cigarette, Leila.”

Leila produced the little flat case she carried.

“That’s brave,” she said.  “Nothing’s incurable at your age.  Only one thing’s incurable—­getting old.”

Noel laughed.  “That’s curable too, isn’t it?”

“Not without surrender.”

Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling.  Then Noel got up from the divan, and went over to the piano.  She was still in her hospital dress of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the keys, playing a chord now, and then, Leila’s heart felt hollow from compassion; she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very wretched!

“Play to me,” she said; “no—­don’t; I’ll play to you.”  And sitting down, she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first line ran:  “Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous.”  It was soft, gay, charming.  If the girl cried, so much the better.  But Noel did not cry.  She seemed suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession.  She spoke calmly, answered Leila’s questions without emotion, and said she would go home.  Leila went out with her, and walked some way in the direction of her home; distressed, but frankly at a loss.  At the bottom of Portland Place Noel stopped and said:  “I’m quite all right now, Leila; thank you awfully.  I shall just go home and lie down.  And I shall come to-morrow, the same as usual.  Goodbye!” Leila could only grasp the girl’s hand, and say:  “My dear, that’s splendid.  There’s many a slip—­besides, it’s war-time.”

With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl moving slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a disturbed and compassionate heart.

2

But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street.  She had received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced cousin’s vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words:  “He hasn’t quite gone from you, has he?” “Besides, it’s war-time.”  Leila had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in which the girl had been groping these last weeks was now removed.  Like most proud natures, she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other people; besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and judgments.  Her nightmare was the thought of her father’s horror and grief.  She tried to lessen that nightmare by remembering his opposition to her marriage, and the resentment she had felt.  He had never realised, never understood, how she and Cyril loved.  Now, if she were really going to have a child, it would be Cyril’s—­Cyril’s son—­Cyril over again.  The instinct stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed her on in such haste to make sure of union—­the irrepressible pulse of life