She tried to smile; she tried to smile the sympathetic yet wise
and tolerant smile with which she was accustomed to listen to the
necessarily biased and incomplete view of the poor. She didn't
succeed. The smile trembled out.

"Of course," she said in a low voice, almost as if she were
afraid the vicar and the Savings Bank were listening, "it would be most
beautiful--most beautiful--"

"Even if it were wrong," said Mrs. Wilkins, "it would only be for
a month."

"That--" began Mrs. Arbuthnot, quite clear as to the
reprehensibleness of such a point of view; but Mrs. Wilkins stopped her
before she could finish.

"Anyhow," said Mrs. Wilkins, stopping her, "I'm sure it's wrong
to go on being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can
see you've been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy"--
Mrs. Arbuthnot opened her mouth to protest--"and I--I've done nothing
but duties, things for other people, ever since I was a girl, and I
don't believe anybody loves me a bit--a bit--the b-better--and I long--
oh, I long--for something else--something else--"

Was she going to cry? Mrs. Arbuthnot became acutely
uncomfortable and sympathetic. She hoped she wasn't going to cry. Not
there. Not in that unfriendly room, with strangers coming and going.

But Mrs. Wilkins, after tugging agitatedly at a handkerchief that
wouldn't come out of her pocket, did succeed at last in merely