"Three weeks?" Sir Herbert said incredulously, his eyebrows high. "But my dear girl, you cannot possibly know that you are with child! There will be no quickening for another three or four months at the very earliest. I should go home and cease to worry."

"I am with child!" Marianne said with hard, very suppressed fury. "The midwife said so, and she is never wrong. She can tell merely by looking at a woman's face, without any of the other signs." Her own expression set in anger and pain, and she stared at him defiantly.

He sighed. "Possibly. But it does not alter the case. The law is very plain. There used to be a distinction between aborting a fetus before it had quickened and after, but that has now been done away with. It is all the same." He sounded weary, as if he had said all this before. "And of course it used to be a hanging offense. Now it is merely a matter of ruin and imprisonment But whatever the punishment, Miss Gillespie, it is a crime I am not prepared to commit, however tragic the circumstances. I am truly sorry."

Julia remained sitting. "We should naturally expect to pay-handsomely."

A small muscle flickered in Sir Herbert's cheeks.

"I had not assumed you were asking it as a gift. But the matter of payment is irrelevant. I have tried to explain to you why I cannot do it." He looked from one to the other of them. "Please believe me, my decision is absolute. I am not unsympathetic, indeed I am not. I grieve for you. But I cannot help."

Marianne rose to her feet and put her hand on Julia's shoulder.

"Come. We shall achieve nothing further here. We shall have to seek help elsewhere." She turned to Sir Herbert. "Thank you for your time. Good day."

Julia climbed to her feet very slowly, still half lingering, as if there were some hope.

"Elsewhere?" Sir Herbert said with a frown. "I assure you, Miss Gillespie, no reputable surgeon will perform such an operation for you." He drew in his breath sharply, and suddenly his face took on a curiously pinched look, quite different from the slight complacence before. This had a sharp note of reality. "And I beg you, please do not go to the back-street practitioners," he urged. "They will assuredly do it for you, and very possibly ruin you for life; at worst bungle it so badly you become infected and either bleed to death or die in agony of septicemia."

Both women froze, staring at him, eyes wide.

He leaned forward, his hands white-knuckled on the desk.

"Believe me, Miss Gillespie, I am not trying to distress you unnecessarily. I know what I am speaking about. My own daughter was the victim of such a man! She too was molested, as you were. She was only sixteen…" His voice caught for a moment, and he had to force himself to continue. Only his inner anger overcame his grief. "We never found who the man was. She told us nothing about it. She was too frightened, too shocked and ashamed. She went to a private abortionist who was so clumsy he cut her inside. Now she will never bear a child."

His eyes were narrowed slits in a face almost bloodless. "She will never even be able to have a normal union with a man. She will be single all her life, and in pain-in constant pain. For God's sake don't go to a back-street abortionist!" His voice dropped again, curiously husky. "Have your child, Miss Gillespie. Whatever you think now, it is the better part than what you face if you go to someone else for the help I cannot give you."

"I…" Marianne gulped. "I wasn't thinking of anything so-I mean-I hadn't…"

"We hadn't thought of going to such a person," Julia said in a tight brittle voice. "Neither of us would know how to find one, or whom to approach. I had only thought of a reputable surgeon. I-I hadn't realized it was against the law, not when the woman was a victim-of rape."

"I am afraid the law makes no distinction. The child's life is the same."

"I am not concerned with the child's life," Julia said in little more than a whisper. "I am thinking of Marianne."

"She is a healthy young woman. She will probably be perfectly all right. And in time she will recover from the fear and the grief. There is nothing I can do. I am sorry."

"So you have said. I apologize for having taken up your time. Good day, Sir Herbert."

"Good day, Mrs. Penrose-Miss Gillespie." As soon as they were gone, Sir Herbert closed the door and returned to his desk. He sat motionless for several seconds, then apparently dismissed the matter and reached for a pile of notes.

Hester came out of the alcove, hesitated, then crossed the floor.

Sir Herbert's head jerked up, his eyes momentarily wide with surprise.

"Oh-Miss Latterly." Then he recollected himself. "Yes-the body's away. Thank you. That's all for the moment. Thank you."

It was dismissal.

"Yes, Sir Herbert."

Hester found the encounter deeply distressing. She could not clear it from her mind, and at the first opportunity she recounted the entire interview to Callandra. It was late evening, and they were sitting outside in Callandra's garden. The scent of roses was heavy in the air and the low sunlight slanting on the poplar leaves was deep golden, almost an apricot shade. There was no motion except the sunset wind in the leaves. The wall muffled the passing of hooves and made inaudible the hiss of carriage wheels.

"It was like the worst kind of dream," Hester said, staring at the poplars and the golden blue sky beyond. "I was aware what was going to happen before it did. And of course I knew every word she said was true, and yet I was helpless to do anything at all about it." She turned to Callandra. "I suppose Sir Herbert is right, and it is a crime to abort, even when the child is a result of rape. It is not anything I have ever had to know. I have nursed entirely soldiers or people suffering from injury or fevers. I have no experience of midwifery at all. I have not even cared for a child, much less a mother and infant. It seems so wrong."

She slapped her hand on the arm of the wicker garden chair. "I am seeing women suffer in a way I never knew before. I suppose I hadn't thought about it. But do you know how many women have come into that hospital in even the few days I've been there, who are worn out and ill as a result of bearing child after child?" She leaned a little farther to face Callandra. "And how many are there we don't see? How many just live lives in silent despair and terror of the next pregnancy?" She banged the chair arm again. "There's such ignorance. Such blind tragic ignorance."

"I am not sure what good knowledge would do," Callandra replied, looking not at Hester but at the rose bed and a late butterfly drifting from one bloom to another. "Forms of prevention have been around since Roman days, but they are not available to most people." She pulled a face. "And they are very often weird contraptions that the ordinary man would not use. A woman has no right in civil or religious law to deny her husband, and even if she had, common sense and the need to survive on something like equable terms would make it impractical."

"At least knowledge would take away some of the shock," Hester argued hotly. "We had one young woman in hospital who was so mortified when she discovered what marriage required of her she went into hysterics, and then tried to kill herself." Her voice rose with outrage. "No one had given her the slightest idea, and she simply could not endure it. She had been brought up with the strictest teachings of purity and it overwhelmed her. She was married by her parents to a man thirty years older than herself and with little patience or gentleness. She came into the hospital with broken arms and legs and ribs where she had jumped out of a window in an attempt to kill herself." She took a deep breath and made a vain attempt to lower her tone.