Consequences

<h3><SPAN name="XXX" id="XXX"></SPAN>XXX</h3> <h3>Epitaph</h3> <p>They sat round, afterwards, in the Clevedon Square drawing-room&mdash;all the people who had helped misguided, erring Alex, according to their lights, or again, according to their limitations, and who had failed her so completely in the ultimate essential.</p> <p>Pamela and her lover whispered together in the window.</p> <p>"After all, you know," hesitated the girl, "she had nothing much to live for, poor Alex. She'd got out of touch with all of us&mdash;and she had no one of her very own."</p> <p>"Not like us."</p> <p>His hand closed for an instant over hers.</p> <p>"There was no reason why she should not have come to us if&mdash;if she was in money difficulties," reiterated Cedric uneasily. He consciously refrained from adding "again."</p> <p>Violet was crying softly, lying back in the depths of a great arm-chair.</p> <p>"Poor Alex! I never guessed Malden Road was like that. Why <i>did</i> she go there? Oh, poor Alex!"</p> <p>"You were nicer to her than any of us, Violet," said Archie gruffly. "She was awfully fond of you, wasn't she, and of the little kid?"</p> <p>Barbara, hard and self-contained, gazed round the familiar room. For a moment it seemed to her that they were all children again, sent down from the nursery by old Nurse, on Lady Isabel's "At Home" afternoon.</p> <p>Her eyes met those of Cedric, who had taken up his stand against the mantelpiece, in his hand his glasses, which he was shaking with little, judicial jerks.</p> <p>"Oh, Cedric," said Barbara with a sudden catch in her voice.</p> <p>"Don't you remember&mdash;Alex was such a <i>pretty</i> little girl!"</p> <p><span style="margin-left: 1em;">London, 1917.</span><br/> <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bristol, 1918.</span><br/></p> <p>THE END</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />