It was a little time before the door opened and Moira Herne came in. When you have heard a lot about someone, there is always a moment in a first actual meeting when it seems as if the person whom you have only met in thought is one person, and the one who confronts you in the flesh is another. Minnie Jones had this feeling very strongly as she got out of her chair and came forward to meet Moira Herne. There was the Moira whom poor Arthur had talked about by the hour, the Moira whom he had loved and who had loved him and who must be brokenhearted at his death, and there was this girl who was coming into the room. She wore dark blue slacks and a tight scarlet jumper, and she didn’t look as if she had a heart to break. Minnie had a quick stab of conscience for that. You couldn’t judge people by how they looked. A heart didn’t show unless you wore it on your sleeve, and why should you do that?

She put out her hand, but since there was no answering movement she let it drop again as she said,

“I am Arthur’s aunt, my dear. His mother was my sister Gwen. I expect he has told you about me, and I have heard a great deal about you.”

There was a blue and green rug on the morning-room floor. It would be a little over six foot wide. Minnie had the thought that it was like a stream of green and blue water flowing between them, she on the one side of it and Moira on the other. Into this thought and mingling with it, came the remembrance of the parable in the Bible about the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom and Dives was in a place of punishment, and between them there was a great gulf fixed. The thought was vague enough-it neither labelled Moira nor herself. But that the gulf was there between them was something she didn’t have to think about. It was there. From the other side of it Moira said,

“What do you want?”

And from her side of the gulf Minnie answered her.

“I wanted to comfort you.”

It was already in the past tense, because she knew now that Moira didn’t want her comfort.

Moira stood there and stared. She said,

“Why?”

“For Arthur’s death.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know why you’ve come.”

Minnie straightened herself as she would have done if she had been suddenly called upon to lift a weight. It was too heavy for her, but she had to lift it. She said in a small steady voice,

“I brought you some things which I thought you would like to have. I thought it would comfort you to have them.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“He talked to me about you. He said you were in love with each other. He said you were going to be married.”

“I’m afraid he was telling the tale.”

All the way that she had come Minnie had thought about what she was going to say to the girl whom Arthur had loved and who had lost him. Now that she was here and everything was quite different from what she had thought it was going to be, she still had to say what she had planned to say. Her mind and her thought were set and she could not change them. She said,

“There were the letters-your letters. I thought perhaps you would like to have them back.”

That light fixed look of Moira’s changed. It had been cold enough, now it became wary. She said,

“So that’s it, is it? My letters? What do you want for them?”

Minnie Jones was not able to understand what was being said to her. It was like hearing something in a foreign language-there is a sound and there are words, but you don’t know what they mean. She didn’t know what Moira meant.

She had left her black handbag on the arm of the chair. She turned round to get it now. She began to open it.

“He kept them. I thought you would like to have them.”

Moira crossed the blue and green rug and came to stand beside her.

“Have you got them with you-all of them? Let me have them-they’re mine!”

The bag was a capacious one. It held the packet of letters easily enough. There were not so very many of them. The affair had been a brief madness-a quick blaze up like burning straw, a rush of hot air, and then nothing but ash. No, there were not so many of the letters, but there ought to be more than this. She said so without compromise.

“There ought to be more. Where are the rest?”

“I don’t know.”

“He said he had burned them-he promised he would. Where are they?”

She had been flicking over the letters in the packet. There were two missing-the really damning ones. And the photographs. She must have been mad to let him take them- quite, quite mad. If Lucy set eyes on them it would be all up with her. It was the sort of thing he was strict about, and not one penny more would she get from him. She knew that well enough. She had to have those letters back, and the photographs, no matter what it cost her. She said sharply,

“There are two more letters, and three photographs-snapshots. He destroyed the films, but he had taken prints from them and he wouldn’t give them up. Where are they?”

Minnie gazed at her.

“He had a very beautiful photograph of you in evening dress.”

“These were not in evening dress.”

They had not, as a matter of fact, been in any kind of dress at all. She really must have been mad. She said abruptly,

“You’ve got them of course. And if you’ve got them, you know damn well that I’ve got to have them! Stop holding out on me and come to the point! How much do you want? And you’d better be moderate, because I’m broke, and if you push me too hard, I shall just hand you over to the police. So get a move on!”

The whole fatigue of these days since Arthur’s death seemed to be pressing down on Minnie Jones. You can take one day at a time and do your best with it, but this wasn’t one day, it was five days-Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday-and it was too much. She didn’t seem able to think properly. She heard Moira say,

“You can be sent to prison for blackmail.”

Once long ago when she and Gwen were girls they had been chased by a bull. Down in the country it was, and Gwen had a dress with poppies on it and a red hat, and the bull had chased them. Gwen ran, but Minnie couldn’t run. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t move. And then Gwen came running back. She had unfastened her brooch and she had it in her hand, and when Minnie didn’t move she ran the pin of the brooch right into her arm, and the next thing Minnie knew they were running together, and they got out of the field before the bull could catch them. It was an odd thing to remember all this long time afterwards, when Gwen had been dead for twenty years, but Moira saying that about prison and blackmail was like the pin of the brooch running into her arm and rousing her up to run away from the bull. Prison-blackmail-the words pricked sharply home. She said,

“Oh!” And then, “You oughtn’t to say a thing like that-it’s not right!”

“The letters and the photographs-where are they? Did you bring them with you?”

She remembered then. There was the packet of letters and there was an envelope, stuck down. She didn’t know what was in it because she hadn’t opened it. It was marked “Private. Keep safe. M.H.” and she had put it in her bag just in case. And because Arthur had marked it “Keep safe” she had put it in the inside pocket, which had really been made to take a piece of looking-glass, only the glass had been broken years ago. The envelope was there now. If it had Moira’s letters in it and the photographs which she didn’t want anyone to see, of course she would give them to her. But before she did that she must open the envelope and make sure of what was in it, because Arthur had marked it “Private, keep safe.” She had the bag in her two hands, her fingers clenched hard. She moved back now until she came to a table that had books on it and coloured primroses in a glass bowl. She set down the bag on the top of the books and opened it and got out the envelope. She didn’t like opening it, because it was marked private, but she had to be sure of what was in it. Her fingers fumbled with the flap of the envelope. It was gummed down very securely.