“Where’s Lise?”

And Janet could not answer.  She shook her head.  Hannah dropped the fork, the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing Janet by the shoulders.

“Is she gone?  I knew it, I felt it all along.  I thought she’d done something she was afraid to tell about—­I tried to ask her, but I couldn’t—­I couldn’t!  And now she’s gone.  Oh, my God, I’ll never forgive myself!”

The unaccustomed sight of her mother’s grief was terrible.  For an instant only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the kitchen chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall.  Her face twitched.  Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her mother’s eyes.  She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself, to have lived through ages of misery and tragedy....  She was aware of a pungent odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the steak.  Now and then she glanced at Hannah.  Grief seemed to have frozen her.  Then, from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in the doorway.

“Well, what’s the matter with breakfast?” he asked.  From where he stood he could not see Hannah’s face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her figure.  His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him.

“Is mother sick?” he asked falteringly.

Janet went to him.  But it was Hannah who spoke.

“Lise has gone,” she said.

“Lise—­gone,” Edward repeated.  “Gone where?”

“She’s run away—­she’s disgraced us,” Hannah replied, in a monotonous, dulled voice.

Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to break the silence.

“She didn’t come home last night, father.”

“Didn’t come home?  Mebbe she spent the night with a friend,” he said.

It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful.

“No, she’s gone, I tell you, she’s lost, we’ll never lay eyes on her again.  My God, I never thought she’d come to this, but I might have guessed it.  Lise!  Lise!  To think it’s my Lise!”

Hannah’s voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat.  So appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise, wherever she was, would have heard it.  Edward was dazed by the shock, his lower lip quivered and fell.  He walked over to Hannah’s chair and put his hand on her shoulder.

“There, there, mother,” he pleaded.  “If she’s gone, we’ll find her, we’ll bring her back to you.”

Hannah shook her head.  She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over to the stove took the fork from Janet’s hand and put the steak on the dish.

“Go in there and set down, Edward,” she said.  “I guess we’ve got to have breakfast just the same, whether she’s gone or not.”