mother's keen on the movement."

"Is she?" She searched her memory. "Yet I don't know the name. Does she
speak, or organise?"

"Oh, she doesn't do anything in public. She lives very quietly in a
little Essex village," he answered, speaking with an involuntary
gravity, an effect of referring to pain, that made her wonder if his
mother was an invalid. She hoped it was not so, for if Mrs. Yaverland
was anything like her son it was terrible to think of her lying in the
stagnant air of ill-health among feeding-cups and medicine bottles and
weaktasting foods. The lot of the sick and the old, whom she conceived
as exceptional people specially scourged, drew tears from her in the
darkness, and she looked across the road at the tall wards which the
infirmary thrust out like piers from its main corridor. "Ah, the poor
souls in there!" she breathed, looking up at the rows of windows which
disclosed the dreadful pale wavering light that lives in sick-rooms. "It
makes you feel guilty, being happy when those poor souls are lying there
in pain." Yaverland did not seek to find out why she had said it, any
more than he asked himself how this night's knowledge of her was to be
continued, or what she meant the end of it to be, though he was aware
that those questions existed. He simply noted that she was being happy.
Yes, they were curiously happy for two people who hardly knew each
other, going home in the rain.

They were passing down the Meadow Walk now, between trees that were like
shapes drawn on blotting-paper and lamps that had the smallest scope.
"Edinburgh's a fine place," he said. "It can handle even an asphalt
track with dignity."