he made a faint affirmative movement of the head, and the cold hand he
had been chafing tried feebly to withdraw itself. He rose at once, and
stood a moment beside her, looking down at her. Then he went.

CHAPTER XXIX

He shut the door softly, and went downstairs again. It was between ten
and eleven. The lights in the lower passage were just extinguished;
every one else in the house had gone to bed. Mechanically he stooped and
put away the child's bricks, he pushed the chairs back into their
places, and then he paused a while before the open window. But there was
not a tremor on the set face. He felt himself capable of no more
emotion. The fount of feeling, of pain, was for the moment dried up.
What he was mainly noticing was the effect of some occasional gusts of
night-wind on the moonlit cornfield; the silver ripples they sent
through it; the shadows thrown by some great trees in the western
corners of the field; the glory of the moon itself in the pale immensity
of the sky.

Presently he turned away, leaving one lamp still burning in the room,
softly unlocked the hall door, took his hat, and went out. He walked up
and down the woodpath or sat on the bench there for some time, thinking
indeed, but thinking with a certain stern practical dryness. Whenever he
felt the thrill of feeling stealing over him again, he would make a
sharp effort at repression. Physically he could not bear much more, and
he knew it. A part remained for him to play, which must be played with
tact, with prudence, and with firmness. Strength and nerves had been
sufficiently weakened already. For his wife's sake, his people's sake,
his honourable reputation's sake, he must guard himself from a collapse
which might mean far more than physical failure.

So in the most patient methodical way he began to plan out the immediate
future. As to waiting, the matter was still in Catherine's hands; but he
knew that finely tempered soul; he knew that when she had mastered her
poor woman's self, as she had always mastered it from her childhood, she
would not bid him wait. He hardly took the possibility into
consideration. The proposal had had some reality in his eyes when he
went to see Mr. Grey; now it had none, though he could hardly have
explained why.

He had already made arrangements with an old Oxford friend to take his
duty during his absence on the Continent. It had been originally
suggested that this Mr. Armitstead should come to Murewell