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At six o’clock next morning it was raining. Mrs St. George was down before her son, and Cummins unexpectedly wept over the bacon and eggs as she was placing the silver chafing-dish on the table.

Mrs St. George looked at her sharply.

“Cummins, don’t be hysterical.”

It was an inarticulate and unhappy meal, and to Alex the taxi appeared as a vehicle of escape. Standing at the window he saw the rain glistening on the black roof of the cab, and the plane-trees and the lilacs all wet, and he thought of yesterday, and the sunlight on that English landscape. How far away yesterday seemed, and Leith Hill, and the pearl-grey downs.

His mother did not go with him to the front door. He had a last glimpse of her standing between the breakfast-table and the fireplace, watching him with those very blue eyes of hers that seemed to him to be for some unknown reason strangely stern. Her heart-burn was a resentful emotion, penetrated by an inarticulate anger against happenings over which she had no control.

She remained there motionless, until the taxi had driven away. She did not go to the window. She heard Cummins close the front door. She realized that Cummins was making moist sounds in the hall. “O, my lamb, we’ll never see you again—perhaps.” And Mrs St. George went out to her with a face of sudden fury.

“Don’t be an hysterical fool, woman.”