It was quite fixed now, and on the way back she had made her new friends promise to be often together with her in the home of their youth.

She had made them promise this so prettily and with such gentle warmth that it was very natural that Gerald, in talking over the event with Helen that evening, should say, strolling round Helen's little sitting-room, 'She's rather a dear, that little friend of yours.' Helen was tired and lay extended on the divan in the grey dress she had not had time to change.

She had doffed her hat and, thrusting its hatpins through it, had laid it on her knees, so that, as Gerald had remarked, she looked rather like Bruenhilde on her rocky couch.

But, unlike Bruenhilde, her hands were clasped behind her neck, and she looked up at the ceiling.

'A perfect little dear,' she assented.
'Did you notice her eyes when she was talking about the foxes?
They were as sorrowful and piteous as a Mater Dolorosa's.