Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/245

 The sun set over the rolling North Downs and with the diminishing of light something weakened within her. She walked, a tragic figure, over the cobbled alien streets and counted to one hundred and back again and recited poetry so that she might not remember Anthony Jones.

The moon flooded her room. She pushed against the night with feverish, meaningless hands. She prayed to him as to a god. There was no strength left in her.

So it was, strong in the morning, but weakening every hour for three days and nights.

The House that Jack Built, and the House that God Begot...'that lay in the House that Jack Built.' Rat, rat eat malt, dog, dog bite rat...to put in the House that Jack Built, and a maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn. Why, it was only a few years ago Mamma used to read her that story out of the old dirty brown book with the ugly little pictures, and yet she had completely forgotten it.

'And Morab begat Nadab and Nadab begat Abidhu and Abidhu begat Aleazar and Aleazar...Eleazar and Elezzar and Neleazar, and Neleazar—a weasel'...she laughed, pleased with her own sacrilege and screwed her mouth up to whistle, but succeeded only in a tuneless blowing. She had definitely decided to go to Winchester and Southampton