Just for a moment Mrs.Thesiger began to think of early days of which the memory was at once a pain and a reproach.

A certain little village underneath the great White Horse on the Dorsetshire Downs rose with a disturbing vividness before her eyes.

She almost heard the mill stream babble by.

In that village of Sutton Poyntz she had herself been born, and to it she had returned, caught back again for a little while by her own country and her youth, that Sylvia might be born there too.

These months had made a kind of green oasis in her life.