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 left her, looking at the window and expecting soon to see a shadow move across it; but she saw nothing; the blinds conveyed nothing; the light was not moved. It signalled to her across the dark street; it was a sign of triumph shining there for ever, not to be extinguished this side of the grave. She brandished her happiness as if in salute; she dipped it as if in reverence. “How they burn!” she thought, and all the darkness of London seemed set. with fires, roaring upwards; but her eyes came back to Mary’s window and rested there satisfied. She had waited some time before a figure detached itself from the doorway and came across the road, slowly and reluctantly, to where she stood.

“I didn’t go in—I couldn’t bring myself,” he broke off. He had stood outside Mary’s door unable to bring himself to knock; if she had come out she would have found him there, the tears running down his cheeks, unable to speak.

They stood for some moments, looking at the illuminated blinds, an expression to them both of something impersonal and serene in the spirit of the woman within, working out her plans far into the night─her plans for the good of a world that none of them were ever to know. Then their minds jumped on and other little figures came by in procession, headed, in Ralph’s view, by the figure of Sally Seal.

“Do you remember Sally Seal?” he asked. Katharine bent her head.

“Your mother and Mary?” he went on. “Rodney and Cassandra? Old Joan up at Highgate?” He stopped in his enumeration, not finding it possible to link them together in any way that should explain the queer combination which he could perceive in them, as he thought of them. They appeared to him to be more than individuals; to be made up of many different things in cohesion; he had a vision of an orderly world.

“It’s all so easy─it’s all so simple,” Katharine quoted,