There was a terrific rumpus down at the rectory, on account of Yvette and the Window Fund. After the war, Aunt Cissie had set her heart on a stained glass window in the church, as a memorial for the men of the parish who had fallen. But the bulk of the fallen had been non-conformists, so the memorial took the form of an ugly little monument in front of the Wesleyan chapel.

This did not vanquish Aunt Cissie. She canvassed, she had bazaars, she made the girls get up amateur theatrical shows, for her precious window. Yvette, who quite liked the acting and showing-off part of it, took charge of the farce called Mary in the Mirror, and gathered in the proceeds, which were to be paid to the Window Fund when accounts were settled. Each of the girls was supposed to have a money-box for the Fund.

Aunt Cissie, feeling that the united sums must now almost suffice, suddenly called in Yvette’s box. It contained fifteen shillings. There was a moment of green horror.

“Where is all the rest?”

“Oh!” said Yvette, casually. “I just borrowed it. It wasn’t so awfully much.”

“What about the three pounds thirteen for Mary in the Mirror?” asked Aunt Cissie, as if the jaws of Hell were yawning.

“Oh quite! I just borrowed it. I can pay it back.”

Poor Aunt Cissie! The green tumour of hate burst inside her, and there was a ghastly, abnormal scene, which left Yvette shivering with fear and nervous loathing.

Even the rector was rather severe.

“If you needed money, why didn’t you tell me?” he said coldly. “Have you ever been refused anything in reason?”

“I— I thought it didn’t matter,” stammered Yvette.

“And what have you done with the money?”

“I suppose I’ve spent it,” said Yvette, with wide, distraught eyes and a peaked face.

“Spent it, on what?”

“I can’t remember everything: stockings and things, and I gave some of it away.”

Poor Yvette! Her lordly airs and ways were already hitting back at her, on the reflex. The rector was angry: his face had a snarling, doggish look, a sort of sneer. He was afraid his daughter was developing some of the rank, tainted qualities of She-who-was-Cynthia.

“You WOULD do the large with somebody else’s money, wouldn’t you?” he said, with a cold, mongrel sort of sneer, which showed what an utter unbeliever he was, at the heart. The inferiority of a heart which has no core of warm belief in it, no pride in life. He had utterly no belief in her.

Yvette went pale, and very distant. Her pride, that frail, precious flame which everybody tried to quench, recoiled like a flame blown far away, on a cold wind, as if blown out, and her face, white now and still like a snowdrop, the white snowflower of his conceit, seemed to have no life in it, only this pure, strange abstraction.

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