After a moment Clementina asked, “Do you believe that the looks are all that ah’ left?”

Miss Milray reflected.  “I know what you mean.  I should say character was left, and personality—­somewhere.”

“I used to feel as if it we’e left here, at fust—­as if he must come back.  But that had to go.”

“Yes.”

“Everything seems to go.  After a while even the loss of him seemed to go.”

“Yes, losses go with the rest.”

“That’s what I mean by its seeming as if it never any of it happened.  Some things before it are a great deal more real.”

“Little things?”

“Not exactly.  But things when I was very young.”  Miss Milray did not know quite what she intended, but she knew that Clementina was feeling her way to something she wanted to say, and she let her alone.  “When it was all over, and I knew that as long as I lived he would be somewhere else, I tried to be paht of the wo’ld I was left in.  Do you think that was right?”

“It was wise; and, yes, it was best,” said Miss Milray, and for relief from the tension which was beginning to tell upon her own nerves, she asked, “I suppose you know about my poor brother?  I’d better tell you to keep you from asking for Mrs. Milray, though I don’t know that it’s so very painful with him.  There isn’t any Mrs. Milray now,” she added, and she explained why.

Neither of them cared for Mrs. Milray, and they did not pretend to be concerned about her, but Clementina said, vaguely, as if in recognition of Mrs. Milray’s latest experiment, “Do you believe in second marriages?”

Miss Milray laughed, “Well, not that kind exactly.”

“No,” Clementina assented, and she colored a little.

Miss Milray was moved to add, “But if you mean another kind, I don’t see why not.  My own mother was married twice.”

“Was she?” Clementina looked relieved and encouraged, but she did not say any more at once.  Then she asked, “Do you know what ever became of Mr. Belsky?”

“Yes.  He’s taken his title again, and gone back to live in Russia; he’s made peace with the Czar; I believe.”

“That’s nice,” said Clementina; and Miss Milray made bold to ask: 

“And what has become of Mr. Gregory?”

Clementina answered, as Miss Milray thought, tentatively and obliquely:  “You know his wife died.”

“No, I never knew that she lived.”

“Yes.  They went out to China, and she died the’a.”

“And is he there yet?  But of course!  He could never have given up being a missionary.”

“Well,” said Clementina, “he isn’t in China.  His health gave out, and he had to come home.  He’s in Middlemount Centa.”

Miss Milray suppressed the “Oh!” that all but broke from her lips.  “Preaching to the heathen, there?” she temporized.

“To the summa folks,” Clementina explained, innocent of satire.  “They have got a Union Chapel the’a, now, and Mr. Gregory has been preaching all summa.”  There seemed nothing more that Miss Milray could prompt her to say, but it was not quite with surprise that she heard Clementina continue, as if it were part of the explanation, and followed from the fact she had stated, “He wants me to marry him.”