rd
watching the Madonna change into the woman. He went into the library
where, since the night had grown chilly, a fire was lit. It was a place
of comfort, with high bookshelves, deep-cushioned chairs, and dark
curtains. But, no less than the dining-room it needed another presence,
and lacking that lacked everything. It needed the girl with the tired
and terror-haunted face. Here, surely the fear would die out of her
soul, the eyes would lose their shadows, the feet regain the lightness
of their step.

Chayne took down his favorite books, but they failed him. Between the
pages and his eyes one face would shape itself. He looked into the fire
and sought as of old to picture in the flames some mountain on which his
hopes were set and to discover the right line for its ascent. But even
that pastime brought no solace for his discontent. The house oppressed
him. It was empty, it was silent. He drew aside the curtains and looking
down into the valley through the clear night air watched the lights in
cottage and farm with the envy born of his loneliness.

In spite of the brave words he had used, he wondered to-night whether the
three-foot hedge was not after all to prove the unassailable wall. And it
was important that he should know. For if it were so, why then he had not
called at the War Office in vain. A proposal had been made to him--that
he should join a commission for the delimitation of a distant frontier. A
year's work and an immediate departure--those were the conditions. Within
two days he must make up his mind--within ten days he must leave England.

Chayne pondered over the decision which he must make. If he had lost
Sylvia, here was the mission to accept. For it meant complete severance,
a separation not to be measured by miles alone, but by the nature of the
work, and the comrades, and even the character of the vegetation. He went
to bed in doubt, thinking that the morning might bring him counsel. It
brought him a letter from Sylvia instead.

The letter was long; it was written in haste, it was written in great
distress, so that words which were rather unkind were written down. But
the message of the letter was clear. Chayne was not to come again to the
House of the Running Water; nor to the little house in London when she
returned to it. They were not to meet again. She did not wish for it.

Chayne burnt the letter as soon as he had read it, taking no offence at
the hasty words. "I seem to have worried her