The depth of her own pride and love were not more apparent to her than the sense that the dead asked neither flowers nor regrets, but a share in the life which they had given her, the life which they had lived.
Rodney found her a moment later sitting beneath her grandfather's portrait.

She laid her hand on the seat next her in a friendly way, and said: "Come and sit down, William.

How glad I was you were here! I felt myself getting ruder and ruder." "You are not good at hiding your feelings," he returned dryly.
"Oh, don't scold me--I've had a horrid afternoon." She told him how she had taken the flowers to Mrs.McCormick, and how South Kensington impressed her as the preserve of officers' widows.

She described how the door had opened, and what gloomy avenues of busts and palm-trees and umbrellas had been revealed to her.

She spoke lightly, and succeeded in putting him at his ease.