er heart beating, yet she could not withdraw her gaze. It was nothing: no danger threatened Jenny but the danger of uneventful life; and her sense of sudden yielding to unknown force was the merest fancy, to be quickly forgotten when the occasion had passed. None the less, for that instant her dread was breathless. It was the fear of one who walks in a wood, at an inexplicable rustle. The darkness and the sense of moving

at night from safe harbourage to the unfathomable elements of the open sea. It was such a cold still night that the sliding windows of the car were almost closed, and the atmosphere of the covered upper deck was heavy with tobacco smoke. It was so dark that one could not see beyond

perhaps, for a few instants; and then, quite naturally, she looked at her reflection in the sliding glass. That hat, as she could see in the first sure speedless survey, had got the droops. "See about you!" she said silently and threateningly, jerking her head. The hat trembled at the motion, and was thereafter ignored. Stealthily Jenny went back to her own reflection in the window, catching the clearly-chiselled profile of her face, bereft in the dark mirror of all its colour. She could see her nose and chin quite white, and her lips as part of the general colourless gloom. A little white brooch at her neck stood boldly out; and that was all that could be seen with any clearness, as the light was not directly overhead. Her eyes were quite lost, apparently, in deep shadows. Yet

what was beneath her eyes. So absorbed was she, indeed, that the conductor had to prod her shoulder with his two fingers before he could recover her ticket and exchange it for another. "'Arf asleep, some people!" he grumbled, shoving aside the projecting arms and elbows which prevented his free passage between the seat

g, said the pitching tramcar. Ev-ry bo-dy.... Oh, sickening! Jenny looked at her neighbour's paper-her refuge. "Striking speech," she read. Whose? What did it matter? Talk, talk.... Why didn't they do something? What were they to do? The tram pitched to the refrain of a comic song: "Actions speak louder than words!" That kid who was wheeling the perambulator full of washing.... Jenny's attention drifted away like the speech of one who yawns, and she looked again at her reflection. The girl in the sliding glass wouldn't say much. She'd think the more. She'd say, when Sir Herbert pressed for his answer, "My thoughts are my own, Sir Herbert Mainwaring." What was it the girl in One of the Best said? "You may command an army of soldiers; but you cannot still the beating of a woman's he

. Shops, shops, houses, houses, houses ... light, darkness.... Jenny gathered her skirt. This was where she got down. One glance at the tragic lady of the mirror, one glance at the rising smoke that went to join the general

i

nd Geralds and Dorises were practising upon their mothers' pianos. Then you could hear a din! But not now. Now all was as quiet as night, and even doors were not slammed. Jenny crossed the street and turned a corner. On the corner itself was a small chandler's shop, with "Magnificent Tea, per 2/- lb."; "Excellent Tea, per 1/8d. lb"; "Good Tea, per 1/4d. lb." advertised in great bills upon its windows above a huge collection of unlikely goods gathered together lik

Emmy was the housekeeper, who looked after Pa Blanchard; Jenny was the roving blade who augmented Pa's pension by her own fluctuating wages. That was another slight barrier between the sisters. Nevertheless, Emmy was quite generous enough, and was long-suffering, so that her resentment took the general form of silences and secret broodings upon their different fortunes. There was a great deal to be said about this difference, and the saying grew more and more remote from explicit utterance as thought of it ground into Emmy's mind through long hours and days and weeks of solitude. Pa could not hear anything besides the banging of pots, and he was too used to sudden noises to take any not

y, when Pa and his strength and his rough boisterousness had been the delight of perhaps a dozen regular companions. He sometimes looked at the two girls with a passionless scrutiny, as though he were trying to remember something buried in ancient neglect; and his eyes would thereafter, perhaps at the mere sense of helplessness, fill slowly with tears, until Emmy, smothering her own rough sympathy, would dab Pa's eyes with a harsh handkerchief and would rebuke him for his decay. Those were hard moments in the Blanchard home, for the two girls had grown almost manlike in abhorrence of tears, and with this masculine distaste had arisen a corresponding feeling of powerlessness in face of emotion which they could not share. It was as though Pa had become something like an old and beloved dog, unable to speak, pitied and despised, yet claiming by his very dumbness something that they could only give by means of pats and half-bullying kindness. At such times it was Jenny who left her place

nd possessed of more colour. She was twenty-eight or possibly twenty-nine, and her mouth was rather too hard for pleasantness. It was not peevish, but the lips were set as though she had endured much. Her eyes, also, were hard; although if she cried one saw her face soften remarkably into the semblance of that of a little girl. From an involuntary defiance her expression changed to something really pathetic. One could not help loving her then, not with the free give and take of happy affection, but with a shamed hope that nobody could read the conflict of sympathy and contempt which made one's love frigid and self-conscious. Jenny rarely cried: her cheeks reddened and her eyes grew full of tears; but she did not cry. Her tongue was too ready and her brain too quick for that. Also, she kept her temper from flooding over into the self-abandonment of angry weeping and vituperation. Perhaps it was that she had too much pride-or that in general she saw life with too much self-complacency, or that she was not in the habit of yielding to disappointment. It may have been that Jenny belonged to that class of persons who are called, self-sufficient. She plunged through a crisis with her own zest, meeting attack with counter-attack, keeping her head, surveying with the inst

. Jenny laughed back, and tried to score a point in return, not always scrupulously. Emmy put a check on her tongue. She was sometimes virtuously silent. Jenny rarely put a check on her tongue. She sometimes let it say perfectly outrageous things, and was surprised at the consequences. For her it was enough that she had not meant to hurt. She sometimes hurt very much. She frequently hurt Emmy to the quick, darting in one of her sure careless stabs that shattered Emmy's self-control. So while they loved each other, Jenny also despised Emmy, while Emmy in return hated and was jealous of Jenny, even to the point of actively wishing in moments of furtive and shamefaced savageness

id briefly. One could see wh

is reflection in the looking-glass, as one who encounters and examines a stranger. In the glass his face looked red and ugly, and the tossed grey hair and heavy bea

" he asked. "I he

hirt unbuttoned and his tie out. Come here! Let's have a look at you!" Although her words were unkind, her tone was not, and as

bly and waveringly responded. "

her frown, so concentrated

a speech," she volunt

omebody's paid five hun

it Barnsley or Burnley

he usual sort of new

murders they used to ha

, Pa." Jenny wante

trembled, stiffening his bo

ve until the notion had sunk into his head. "Or perhaps people are m

n and made there the subject of a thousand ruminations. They tantalised Pa's slowly revolving thoughts, and kept these moving through l

hough Jenny supported her father on the one side and he used a stick in his right hand. In the passage he waited while she

e quivered, seeming to

his right arm for the descent into a substantial chair. Upon Pa's plate glistened a fair dumpling, a glorious mountain of paste amid the wreckage

ng that made Pa jump an

s that dumpling, Pa?" She s

at Jenny, sometimes Jenny almost winked at the lithograph portrait of Edward the Seventh (as Prince of Wales) which hung over the mantelpiece above the one-and-tenpenny-ha'penny clock that ticked away so busily there. Something had happened long ago to Edward the Seventh, and he had a stain across his Field Marshal's uniform. Something had happened also to the clock, which lay upon its side, as if kicking in a death agony. Something had happened to almost everything in the kitchen. Even the plates on the dress

hose first flush had been so ill-satisfied by the meat course. When, however, Emmy reappeared with that most domestic of sweets, a bre

spered. "Stew and

hot a malevolent glance from her place. In an awful voic

ht, and Emmy was appeased. She had one satisfied client, at any rate. She

rself, tastelessly beginning t

ried Emmy, bitterly, obliquely attacking her sister by talking at her. "Somet

." Somehow she had never said that before, in all the years; but it seemed to her that

eing adjudged inferior because she had dutifully habituated herself to the ap

m finishing it up. Same with stew. I know it's been something else first. I

sh came into Emmy's cheeks;

"Oh for a bit more money! Then we could give stew to the cat's-meat man and bread to old Thompson's chickens. And th

And sick of it all! You go out; you do just exactly what you like...

of Emmy as born for housework and cooking-of stew and bread puddings. For herself she had dreamed a nobler destiny, a destiny of romance, of delicious unknown things, romantic and indescribably exciting. She was to have the adventures, because

as bad for both o

out all day-doi

l wideness at such a perversion of the f

Here have I ... been in this ... place, slaving! Hour after hour! I wish you'd try and manage better.

umstance. The legend would re-form later, perhaps, and would continue so to re-form as persuasion flowed back upon Jenny's egotism, until it crystallised hard and became unchallengeable; but at any rate for this instant Jenny had had a glimmer of insight into that tamer discontent

like it all right." At that ill-considered suggestion, made with unintentional savageness, Jenny so worked upon herself that her own colour r

s with Alf Rylett?" Emmy's hands were, jerking upon

never! I'm

unexpectedly by a feeb

id Pa Blanchard, tipping his pla

opping. That's all. But for that, I'm in the house day and night. You don't care tuppence about Alf-you wouldn't, not if he was walking the soles off his boots to come to you. You never think about him. He's like dirt, to you. Yet you go out with him time after time...." Her lips as she broke off were pursed i

guessed you wanted him. I wouldn't have done it for worlds. You never said, you know!" Satirically, she concluded, with a studiously careful accent, which she used when she wanted to

Her voice had a roughness in

you were a lady!

try gaslight. "He's never ... Emmy, I didn't know you were such a silly li

w a sharp breath. Then, obstinately, she closed her lips, looking for a moment like the girl in the

to see you ... playing about with him. It's

ything. A fellow like that!" Jen

head to foot, her mind blundering hither and thither for help against a quicker-witted foe.

eat gone from her cheeks, though the hard glitter remained

Sort of man who tells you what he likes for breakfast. I only go with him ... well, you know why, as well as I do. He's all right enough,

hough her fury had flickered, blazing and dying away as thought and feeling struggled together for maste

h a warning glance of anger. "If that's the k

Jenny said, with cold n

i

atent bitternesses in their natures, yearning for expression, found it in his presence. But alone, whatever their angers, they were generally silent. It may have been that their love was strong, or that their courage failed, or that the energy required for conflict was not aroused. That they deeply loved one another was sure; there was rivalry, jealousy, irritation between them, but it did not affect their love. The jealousy was a part of their general discontent-a jealousy that would grow more intense as each remained frustrate and unhappy. Neither understood the forces at work within herself; each saw these p

he table and washing the supper dishes. They were distant, both aggrieved; Emmy with labouring breath and a sense of bitter animosity, Jenny with the curled lip of one triumphant who does not need her triumph a

the small washing-mop, her face averted. Jenny's lip stiffened. She made another attempt, to be the last,

worrying about it." She tried then to keep silent; but the words were forced from her

twice. He'd always want to. You needn't worry about me being ... See, I like somebody else-another fellow. He's on a ship. Nowhere

n secret proved; but as Jenny could not keep out of her voice the slightest tin

mplacable. She was drying the basin, her face hidden. "I'm not going to take your leavings." At that her

won't go out with him-will that put him on to you or send him off altogether? Em, do be sensible. Really, I never knew. Never dr

eeling Emmy still sobbing in her arms, she looked down, laying her face against her sister's face. A little contemptuous smile appeared in her eyes, and her brow furrowed. Well, Emmy could cry. She couldn't. She didn't want to cry. She wanted to go out in the darkness that so pleasantly enwrapped the earth, back to the stir and glitter of life somewhere beyond. Abruptly Jenny sighed. Her vision had been far different from this scene. It had carried her over land and sea right into an unexplored realm where there was wild laughter and noise,

der her breath, as she had s