MRS. MORLAND. No, indeed; I have passed through the valley of the shadow, dear, but I can say thankfully that I have come out again into the sunlight. (A little tremulously.) I suppose it is all to the good that as the years go by the dead should recede farther from us.
MR. MORLAND. Some say they don’t.
MRS. MORLAND. You and I know better, James.
MR. MORLAND. Up there in the misty Hebrides I dare say they think of her as on the island still. Fanny, how long is it since—since you half thought that yourself?
MRS. MORLAND. Ever so many years. Perhaps not the first year. I did cling for a time——
MR. MORLAND. The neighbours here didn’t like it.
MRS. MORLAND. She wasn’t their Mary Rose, you see.
MR. MORLAND. And yet her first disappearance——
MRS. MORLAND. It is all unfathomable. It is as if Mary Rose was just something beautiful that you and I and Simon had dreamt together. You have forgotten much, but so have I. Even that room—(she looks towards the little door)—that was hers and her child’s during all her short married life—I often go into it now without remembering that it was theirs.
MR. MORLAND. It is strange. It is rather terrible. You are pretty nigh forgotten, Mary Rose.