Anne-Marie looked very sad. Nancy made haste to comfort her.
"Then God put a few roses back, for little Anne-Maries who don't like vegetables (which is very naughty of them, because they do one good), and so also a few poets came back into the world."
"But not the real ones?"
"Well, not quite real ones, perhaps," said Nancy.
"Then what is the good of them?" asked Anne-Marie.
Nancy could not say. Nancy could not say what was the good of not quite real poets. But for that matter, what was the good of the real ones? What was the good of anything? Nancy's thoughts went in drooping file to her own work. What was the good of writing a Book? "I need not have written any story at all," she said to herself.
Perhaps that is what God will say when the dead worlds come rolling in at his feet, at the end of Eternity.
X
Poverty and loneliness pushed Nancy along the dreary year, and she went in her brown dress, with her heels worn down at the side, through the autumn and the winter. Aldo was away for weeks at a time, and although he seemed in good humour when he was at home, and dressed elaborately, he was always parsimonious in the house, warning against rashness and expense.
Anne-Marie went to a kindergarten, where the grocer's children, and the baker's children, and the milkman's children went, and she liked them, and they liked her.