The next day a mounted footman brought a note from Garthorne to Vane
saying that his wife had told him of her meeting with him, and also
expressing his pleasure at finding that he was in the neighbourhood, and
asking him to come over to dine and sleep at the Abbey the next evening.
If that evening would suit him he had only to tell the messenger, and a
dog-cart would be sent for him, as the distance by road over the Bewdley
Bridge was considerably over seven miles.

He had been awake nearly all night. In fact, he had spent the greater
part of it on his knees questioning his own soul and seeking that advice
which Father Philip had advised him to seek, and when the early morning
service in the little chapel was over he honestly believed that he had
found it. He went back into his room, after telling the man to put his
horse in the stable, and go to what was stilled called the buttery and
get a glass of beer, and wrote a note thanking Garthorne for his
invitation, and accepting it for the following night.

If Vane had been told a couple of years before that he would visit Enid
and her husband as an ordinary guest, that he would sit opposite to her
at table and hear her address another man as "dear" in the commonplace
of marital conversation, that he would see her exchange with another man
those little half-endearments which are not the least of the charms of
the first few married years, and that he would be able to look upon all
this at least with grave eyes and unmoved features, he would simply have
laughed at the idea as something too ridiculous ever to come within the
bounds of possibility.

Yet, to the outward view, that was exactly what happened during his stay
at Garthorne Abbey. He seemed to see Enid through some impalpable and
yet impenetrable medium. He could see her as he always had seen her; but
to touch her, to put his hand upon her, even to dream of one of those
caresses which such a short time ago had been as common as hand-shakes
between them, was every whit as impossible as the present condition of
things would have seemed to him then.

There were a few other people to dinner. None of them knew anything of
his previous relationship to Enid, and their presence naturally, and
perhaps fortunately, kept the conversation away from the things of the
past; but the Fates had put him in full view of Enid at the table, and,
do what he would, he could not keep his eyes from straying back again
and again to that p