“Oh, she would, she would, if she could!” her voice wailed, softly.  “She would if she could, I know.  I was her youngest child, her only little girl.  But there is no coming back.  And maybe there is no going forth; only a blackness at the last, when all stops—­all stops, for ever and ever and ever, amen! . . .Amen—­so be it.  Ah, I even can’t believe in that!  I can’t even believe in God and Heaven and the hereafter.  I am a pagan, with a pagan’s heart and a pagan’s ways.”

She shuddered again and closed her eyes for a moment.  “Ruddy had a glimpse, one glimpse, that day, the day that Ian came back.  Ruddy said to me that day, ’If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers.’ . . .  And it is true—­by all the gods of all the worlds, it is true.  Pleasure, beauty, is all I ever cared for—­pleasure, beauty, and the Jasmine-flower.  And Ian—­and Ian, yes, Ian!  I think I had soul enough for one true thing, even if I was not true.”

She buried her face in her hands for a moment, as though to hide a great burning.

“But, oh, I wonder if I did ever love Ian, even!  I wonder....  Not then, not then when I deserted him and married Rudyard, but now—­now?  Do—­do I love him even now, as we were to-day with his arms round me, or is it only beauty and pleasure and—­me? . . .  Are they really happy who believe in God and live like—­like her?” She gazed at her mother’s portrait again.  “Yes, she was happy, but only for a moment, and then she was gone—­so soon.  And I shall never see her, I who never saw her with eyes that recall....  And if I could see her, would I?  I am a pagan—­would I try to be like her, if I could?  I never really prayed, because I never truly felt there was a God that was not all space, and that was all soul and understanding.  And what is to come of it, or what will become of me? . . .  I can’t go back, and going on is madness.  Yes, yes, it is madness, I know—­madness and badness—­and dust at the end of it all.  Beauty gone, pleasure gone....  I do not even love pleasure now as I did.  It has lost its flavour; and I do not even love beauty as I did.  How well I know it!  I used to climb hills to see a sunset; I used to walk miles to find the wood anemones and the wild violets; I used to worship a pretty child . . . a pretty child!”

She shrank back in her chair and pondered darkly.  “A pretty child....  Other people’s pretty children, and music and art and trees and the sea, and the colours of the hills, and the eyes of wild animals . . and a pretty child.  I wonder, I wonder if—­”

But she got no farther with that thought.  “I shall hate everything on earth if it goes from me, the beauty of things; and I feel that it is going.  The freshness of sense has gone, somehow.  I am not stirred as I used to be, not by the same things.  If I lose that sense I shall kill myself.  Perhaps that would be the easiest way now.  Just the overdose of—­”