feeling. Mary and Ally (this she was not aware of) got
more "out of" Rowcliffe, so to speak, than she did. Gwenda had known
nothing approaching to Mary's serene and brooding satisfaction or
Ally's ecstasy. She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths,
the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools. In Rowcliffe's presence
she had not felt altogether safe or altogether happy. But, if she
stood on the edge of an abyss, at least she _stood_ there, firm on the
solid earth. She could balance herself; she could even lean forward
a little and look over, without losing her head, thrilled with the
uncertainty and peril of the adventure. And of course it wasn't as if
Rowcliffe had left her standing. He hadn't. He had held out his hand
to her, as it were, and said, "Let's get on--get on!" which was as
good as saying that, as long as it lasted, it was _their_ adventure,
not hers. He had drawn her after him at an exciting pace, along the
edge of the abyss, never losing _his_ head for a minute, so that she
ought to have felt safe with him. Only she hadn't. She had said to
herself, "If I knew him better, if I saw what was in him, perhaps I
should feel safe."

There was something she wanted to see in him; something that her
innermost secret self, fastidious and exacting, demanded from him
before it would loosen the grip that held her back.

And now she knew that it _was_ there. It had been told her in four
words: "He never saved himself."

She might have known it. For she remembered things, now; how he had
nursed old Greatorex like a woman; how he had sat up half the night
with Jim Greatorex's mare Daisy; how he kept Jim Greatorex from
drinking; and how he had been kind to poor Essy when she had the face
ache; and gentle to little Ally.

And now Ned Alderson's ridiculous baby would live and Rowcliffe would
die. Was _that_ what she had required of him? She felt as if somehow
_she_ had done it; as if her innermost secret self, iniquitously
exacting, had thrown down the gage into the arena and that he had
picked it up.

"He saved others. Himself he"--never saved.

He had become god-like to her.

And the passion she had trampled on lifted itself and passed into
the phase of adoration. It had received the dangerous sanction of the
soul.

* * * * *

She turned off the high road at the point where, three months ago,
she had seen Mary cycling up the hill from Morfe. Now, as then, she
descended upo