"She's a friend of mine. She works at the crèche and shelter home we run in Plaistow. She said that I ought to live somewhere—not in a club—where they'd keep meals and things for me. I ought to diet or something—you know, on unstale fish and eggs and things. But you know, Father, it's all absurd. How can I afford a house and servants—or to live in one of these communal palaces where everything is just so? She suggested that I should take unto myself a friend and share a flat with her—someone of a meek and domestic disposition—not herself. She's married and has four children. But now, father, can you honestly imagine me living peacefully with another woman, installed à deux in—say Aberdeen Mansions? Why, the poor creature would have a fearful time."
"She would. The worst of being a reformer is that you can't stop—even at your friend's characters, can you?"
Delia rose and pressed out the ashes from her cigarette against the hearth rail.
"I haven't any friends—of that sort," she said slowly. "You can't when you're really working hard. I have heaps of colleagues, but"—she shrugged her shoulders—"you know, since Martin was killed I do find it so awfully hard to keep my temper with other people. They infuriate me simply for not being he—because they dare to go on living, being so much less worthy of life, when he is dead. Of course it's entirely my own fault, and in my sane moments I realize how impossible I am to live with. But, however hard I work for some sort of vague idea of a regenerated society, I always seem to be fighting people instead of loving them." She laughed, pushing back her smooth black hair with her tobacco-stained fingers. "I am like one of St. Paul's unfortunates, who give my body to be burnt, not having charity. So I suppose my sacrifice is worth nothing."
There was a little catch in her voice. Her face in the firelight was almost fantastically wan, the face of a fighter prematurely old.
"Really," protested the vicar, "you terrible idealists give more trouble to law-abiding, peaceful people like myself than all the sinners God ever put into the world to leaven the lump of good intentions. Which reminds me—I've got one coming to tea."
"Good heavens! Who? Which? Idealist or sinner?"
"I don't quite know. A problem anyway. I do wish that you young women would let me alone."
"A young woman? Oh, father dear, don't you think I've had enough young women? I wanted the cloistered solitude of male society for a little."
"It's Muriel Hammond. You remember her?"