THE BODY COMES TO TOWN 1 And after all he slept, slept dreamlessly.

He woke to the comfortable accustomed voices of Mrs.Ridge, his bedmaker, and Miss Annett, her assistant.

It was a cold frosty morning; the sky showed through the window a cloudless blue.
He could hear the deep base voice of Mrs.Ridge in her favourite phrase: "Well, I _don't_ think, Miss Annett.

You won't get over me," and Miss Annett's mildly submissive, "I should think _not_ indeed, Mrs.Ridge." Lying back in bed he surveyed with a mild wonder the fact that he had thus, easily, slept.

He felt, moreover, that that body had already, in the division of to-day from yesterday, lost much of its haunting power.
In the clean freshness of the day, in the comfort of the casual voices of the two women in the other room, in the smell of the coffee, yesterday's melodrama seemed incredible.