tender, pure and supernatural beauty. She could see the flags on the
path and the stones in the gray walls. They stood out with a strange
significance and importance. As if near and yet horribly far away, she
could hear Rowcliffe's footsteps in the passage.

It came over her that she was sitting in Rowcliffe's room--like
this--for the last time.

Then her heart dragged and tore at her, as if it fought against her
will to die. But it never occurred to her that this dying of hers was
willed by her. It seemed foredoomed, inevitable.

* * * * *

And now she was looking up in Rowcliffe's face and smiling at him as
he brought her her tea.

"That's right," he said.

He was entirely reassured by her appearance.

"Look here, shall I drive you back or do you feel like another
four-mile walk?"

She hesitated.

"It's late," he said. "But no matter. Let's be reckless."

"There's no need. I've got my bicycle."

"Then I'll get mine."

She rose. "Don't. I'm going back alone."

"You're not. I'm coming with you. I want to come."

"If you don't mind, I'd rather you didn't--to-night."

"I'll drive you, then. I can't let you go alone."

"But I _want_," she said, "to be alone."

He stood looking at her with a sort of sullen tenderness.

"You're not going to worry about what I told you?"

"You didn't tell me. I knew."

"Then----"

But she persisted.

"No. I shall be all right," she said. "There's a moon."

In the end he let her have her way.

Moon or no moon he saw that it was not his moment.

XXXVII

What Gwenda had to do she did quickly.

She wrote to the third Mrs. Cartaret that night. She told her nothing
except that she wanted to get something to do in London and to get it
as soon as possible, and she asked her stepmother if she could put her
up for a week or two until she got it. And would Mummy mind wiring Yes
or No on Saturday morning?

It was then Thursday night.

She slipped out into the village about midnight to post the letter,
though she knew that it couldn't go one minute before three o'clock on
Friday afternoon.

She had no conscious fear that her will would fail her, but her
instinct was appeased by action.

On Saturday morning Mrs. Cartaret wired: "Delighted. Expect you
Friday. Mummy."

Five intolerable days. They were not more intolerable than the days
that would come after, when the thing she was doing would be every bit
as hard. Only her i