“Not five per cent.”

“I should like a sniff of home air to-night, and a long look at the stars…”

Clare turned her head.

“Don’t, Tony!”

“How then?”

“You’ve been with me all the evening.”

“If only I could take you home!”

“You can’t, my dear. Squeeze my little finger, and pull yourself together.”

“Clare!”

“Look! They’re just in front—now vanish! Get a good long drink at the Club and dream of horses. There! Was that close enough? Good-night, dear Tony!”

“God! Good-night!”

Time has been compared with a stream, but it differs—you cannot cross it, grey and even-flowing, wide as the world itself, having neither ford nor bridge; and though, according to philosophers, it may flow both up and down, the calendar as yet follows it but one way.

November, then, became December, but December did not become November. Except for a cold snap or two the weather remained mild. Unemployment decreased; the adverse balance of trade increased; seven foxes escaped for every one killed; the papers fluttered from the storms in their tea-cups; a great deal of income tax was paid; still more was not; the question: “Why has prosperity gone to pot?” continued to bewilder every mind; the pound went up, the pound went down. In short, time flowed, but the conundrum of existence remained unsolved.

At Condaford the bakery scheme was dropped. Every penny that could be raised was to be put into pigs, poultry and potatoes. Sir Lawrence and Michael were now deep in the ‘Three P. Plan,’ and Dinny had become infected. She and the General spent all their days preparing for the millennium which would follow its adoption. Eustace Dornford had expressed his adherence to the proposition. Figures had been prepared to show that in ten years one hundred millions a year could be knocked off Britain’s purchasing bill by graduated prohibition of the import of these three articles of food, without increasing the cost of living. With a little organisation, a fractional change in the nature of the Briton, and the increase of wheat offals, the thing was as good as done. In the meantime, the General borrowed slightly on his life assurance policy and paid his taxes.

The new Member, visiting his constituency, spent Christmas at Condaford, talking almost exclusively of pigs, instinct telling him that they were just then the surest line of approach to Dinny’s heart. Clare, too, spent Christmas at home. How, apart from secretarial duties, she had spent the intervening time, was tacitly assumed. No letter had come from Jerry Corven, but it was known from the papers that he was back in Ceylon. During the days between Christmas and the New Year the habitable part of the old house was full: Hilary, his wife, and their daughter Monica; Adrian and Diana, with Sheila and Ronald, now recovered from the measles—no such family gathering had been held for years. Even Sir Lionel and Lady Alison drove down for lunch on New Year’s Eve. With such an overwhelming Conservative majority it was felt that 1932 would be important. Dinny was run off her legs. She gave no sign of it, but had less an air of living in the past. So much was she the party’s life and soul that no one could have told she had any of her own. Dornford gazed at her in speculation. What was behind that untiring cheerful selflessness? He went so far as to ask of Adrian, who seemed to be her favourite.

“This house wouldn’t work without your niece, Mr. Cherrell.”

“It wouldn’t. Dinny’s a wonder.”

“Doesn’t she ever think of herself?”

Adrian looked at him sideways. The pale-brown, rather hollow-cheeked face, with its dark hair, and hazel eyes, was sympathetic; for a lawyer and a politician, he looked sensitive. Inclined, however, to a sheepdog attitude where Dinny was concerned, he answered with caution:

“Why no, no more than reason; indeed, not so much.”

“She looks to me sometimes as if she’d been through something pretty bad.”

Adrian shrugged. “She’s twenty-seven.”

“Would you mind awfully telling me what it was? This isn’t curiosity. I’m—well, I’m in love with her, and terrified of butting in and hurting her through ignorance.”

Adrian took a long gurgling pull at his pipe.

“If you’re in dead earnest—”

“Absolutely dead earnest.”

“It might save her a pang or two. She was terribly in love, the year before last, and it came to a tragic end.”

“Death?”

“No. I can’t tell you the exact story, but the man had done something that placed him, in a sense—or at all events he thought so—outside the pale; and he put an end to their engagement rather than involve Dinny, and went off to the Far East. It was a complete cut. Dinny has never spoken of it since, but I’m afraid she’ll never forget.”

“I see. Thank you very much. You’ve done me a great service.”

“Sorry if it’s hurt,” murmured Adrian; “but better, perhaps, to have one’s eyes open.”

“Much.”

Resuming the tune on his pipe, Adrian stole several glances at his silent neighbour. That averted face wore an expression not exactly dashed or sad, but as if contending deeply with the future. ‘He’s the nearest approach,’ he thought, ‘to what I should like for her—sensitive, quiet, and plucky. But things are always so damnably perverse!’

“She’s very different from her sister,” he said at last.

Dornford smiled.

“Ancient and modern.”

“Clare’s a pretty creature, though.”

“Oh, yes, and lots of qualities.”

“They’ve both got grit. How does she do her work?”

“Very well; quick in the uptak’, good memory, heaps of savoir-faire.”

“Pity she’s in such a position. I don’t know why things went wrong, and I don’t see how they can come right.”

“I’ve never met Corven.”

“Quite nice to meet; but, by the look of him, a streak of cruelty.”

“Dinny says he’s vindictive.”

Adrian nodded. “I should think so. And that’s bad when it comes to divorce. But I hope it won’t—always a dirty business, and probably the wrong person tarred. I don’t remember a divorce in our family.”

“Nor in mine, but we’re Catholics.”

“Judging by your experience in the Courts, should you say English morality is going downhill?”

“No. On the upgrade, if anything.”

“But surely the standard is slacker?”

“People are franker, not quite the same thing.”

“You lawyers and judges, at all events,” said Adrian, “are exceptionally moral men.”

“Oh! Where did you get that from?”

“The papers.”

Dornford laughed.

“Well!” said Adrian, rising. “Let’s have a game of billiards…”

On the Monday after New Year’s Day the party broke up. In the afternoon Dinny lay down on her bed and went to sleep. The grey light failed and darkness filled her room. She dreamed she was on the bank of a river. Wilfrid was holding her hand, pointing to the far side, and saying: “‘One more river, one more river to cross!’” Hand in hand they went down the bank. In the water all became dark! She lost touch of his hand and cried out in terror. Losing her foothold, she drifted, reaching her hands this way and that, and his voice, further and further away, “‘One more river—one more river,’” died to a sigh. She awoke agonised. Through the window opposite was the dark sky, the elm tree brushing at the stars—no sound, no scent, no colour. And she lay quite still, drawing deep breaths to get the better of her anguish. It was long since she had felt Wilfrid so close to her, or been so poignantly bereaved once more.

She got up, and, having bathed her face in cold water, stood at her window looking into the starry dark, still shuddering a little from the vivid misery of her dream. ‘One more river!’

Someone tapped on the door.

“Yes?”

“It’s old Mrs. Purdy, Miss Dinny. They say she’s going fast. The doctor’s there, but—”