Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/287

 The End of an Episode

By Evelyn Sharp

, the novelist, had gone blind. And the ladies who had come to inquire after him sat and discussed the matter over their afternoon tea. Most of the people from the country round who had come with the same object had gone away baffled by his uncompromising attitude; for Allan Drew had never cultivated the particular set of social emotions which were demanded by his present situation; and he had no intention of helping the people, who bored him, to get through a formula of compassion that he did not want. So this afternoon he sat and listened in silence while his visitors talked with conviction about a trial of which they had not the least experience.

"It is difficult, sometimes, to understand the workings of Providence, but" said the Rector's wife. In spite of the years of practice that she must have had in the work of consolation, she did not seem to be getting on very well now.

To the novelist she appeared to be wavering between an inclination to treat him like a villager who had to be patronised and a Parish Councillor who had to be propitiated.

"Almost impossible, yes," said Allan Drew, and he shifted his position wearily.

"I think Fate is sometimes kinder than she seems at first sight,"