Before, and even during the war, Christmas day at Bruton Street used to be rather a function. On that day, Julia, still the feudalist in her domestic policy, was wont to rise earlier than usual, to distribute gifts among her servants, to proceed to church, lunch in some state, and during the afternoon receive such of her friends as had not left town.

This Christmas, Brunton's continued obduracy made functions impossible. Waking late to the subdued glimmer of the bed-lamp, to the presence of her maid and the tea-tray, Julia was conscious of depression. Her night had been restless, haunted by the specter of defeat. The "flaunting policy" had failed! Depression grew. The idea of distributing presents, of her servants' formal thanks, fretted her. Fretted her, too, the thought that this would be the first Nativity on which she had ever missed going to church.

But gradually, as she bathed, as her maid swathed her in a long purple velvet tea-gown, Julia's vitality began to revive. A little of the Christmas spirit entered into her. She recognized for how much she had to be thankful; for ample means, for well-trained servants, for a well-tended house, for a mind still confident of its powers, for a conscience assured in its right-doing, for a son who adored her and whom she adored, and, lastly but not least, for work still to be accomplished.

This certainty of work to come, of a creative task dim-visualized as yet, but already quickening in the womb of her mentality, had been newly-vivid during the restless night; so that she was now assured--with that assurance which only the craftswoman possesses--of another book shortly to be born from her pen. "My last book, perhaps!" she thought; and dreaded, in anticipation, the labor of that book-bearing.

The distribution of the presents tired her. Depression returned with the physical fatigue of being gracious. But, once the little ceremony was over and she sat waiting for Ronnie and Aliette in the square box of a work-room, the old lady grew almost fey with the prescience of coming triumph. She, Julia Cavendish, might die, but even in her dying she would not be defeated. By her own unaided strength, by the very steel of her spirit, she would beat down all obstacles--the labors of book-bearing, the obduracy of Aliette's husband, the defections of their friends.

And--in that moment of feyness--Julia knew that the unwritten book, her own death, and her son's future were mysteriously intertwined; that the only sword which could sever the Gordian knot of Hector Brunton's obduracy was the sword of the written word. But as yet her knowledge was all nebulous, the merest protoplasm of a plan.