was bringing understanding. She realized the shock to him, and wept
over it. She saw, too, that she had been unjust and cowardly in letting
the situation go so far without speaking; and that there was no real
excuse for her.

Would he give her up? She had told him that all was at an end between
them; but that was only pride--making a virtue of a necessity. Oh, no,
no, he must not give her up! It was only six weeks since their first
meeting, and though it would be untrue to say that since the meeting he
had wholly possessed her thoughts, she had been capable all through them
of that sort of dallying with the vicar which Janet thought unkind. She
had been able to find plenty of mind for her work, and for the ambitions
of her new profession, and had spent many a careless hour steeped in the
sheer physical pleasure of the harvest. Yet, from the beginning, his
personality had laid its grip on hers. She had never been able to forget
him for long. One visit from him was no sooner over than she was
calculating on and dreaming of the next. And as the consciousness
of some new birth in her had grown, and sudden glimpses had come to her
of some supreme joy, possibly within her grasp, so fear had grown, and
anxiety. She looked back upon her past, and knew it stained--knew that it
must at some point rise as an obstacle between her and him.

But how great an obstacle? She was going to tell him, faithfully,
frankly, all the story of her marriage--accuse her own rash self-will in
marrying Delane, confess her own failings as a wife; she would tell no
hypocritical tale. She would make it plain that Roger had found in her no
mere suffering saint, and that probably her intolerance and impatience
had contributed to send him to damnation. But, after all, when it was
told, what could Ellesborough do but pity her?--take her in his arms--and
comfort her--for those awful years--and her lost child?

The tears rained down her cheeks. He loved her! She was certain of that.
When he had once heard the story, he could not forsake her! She already
saw the pity in his deep grey eyes; she already felt his honest,
protecting arms about her.

Ah--_but then_? Beyond that imagined scene, which rose, as though
it were staged, before her, Rachel's shrinking eyes, in the windy
darkness, seemed to be penetrating to another--a phantom scene in a dim
distance--drawn not from the future, but the past. Two figures moved in
it. One was herself. The other was not R