Miss Howe screamed again.
“Then you didn’t? Oh, my dear?”
“Emancipation with a vengeance,” said Mr. Flood.
“It had to come, Anita,” said Miss Howe with deadly sympathy.
“It was not that. It was only—she was so extraordinarily sensitive about the Resting-place—unlike herself altogether. I think, I’ve always thought that she herself knew how unworthy it was of her. She—what’s the use of disguising it?—she, at least, had a value for my judgment,” her eyes, wandering past Miss Howe, brooded upon the Baxter girl, “and she knew what my judgment would be. She owned it. She anticipated it. I had shut the book, you know, quietly. She sat so still that I thought she was asleep. She had had one of those insane mornings——”
“Of course. She used to take a crowd of children into the country, didn’t she?”
“Once a week. Slum children.”
“I know. ‘To eat buttercups,’ she told me,” said Miss Howe.
“It was ridiculous, you know. She couldn’t afford it. Look at the way she lived! I always said to her, ‘If you can afford mad extravagances of that sort, you can afford a decent flat in a decent neighbourhood’——”
“Oh, but I loved those rooms,” said the Baxter girl, “with the Spanish leather screen round the wash-hand-stand.”