XXX
Epitaph
They sat round, afterwards, in the Clevedon Square drawing-room—all the people who had helped misguided, erring Alex, according to their lights, or again, according to their limitations, and who had failed her so completely in the ultimate essential.
Pamela and her lover whispered together in the window.
"After all, you know," hesitated the girl, "she had nothing much to live for, poor Alex. She'd got out of touch with all of us—and she had no one of her very own."
"Not like us."
His hand closed for an instant over hers.
"There was no reason why she should not have come to us if—if she was in money difficulties," reiterated Cedric uneasily. He consciously refrained from adding "again."
Violet was crying softly, lying back in the depths of a great arm-chair.