Alan could not have saved Lettice from the consequences of her
own act, even if he had realized its significance from the first--which
he did not. But now he knew that she was giving more as a woman than he,
as a man, had ever thought of taking from her; and he also, with a
somewhat heavy heart, perceived that a change in their relations to one
another was drawing near.

Lettice was sitting in her little study one morning, turning over in her
mind the question which so deeply agitated her, and trying to think that
she was prepared for the only solution which appeared to be possible or
acceptable. Alan and she were to go their separate ways: that was, she
told herself, the one thing fixed and unalterable. They might meet again
as friends, and give each other help and sympathy; but it was their
irrevocable doom that they should live apart and alone. That which her
heart had sanctioned hitherto, it would sanction no longer; the cause
and the justification were gone, and so were the courage and the
confidence.

Lettice had appropriated to her own use as a study a little room on the
ground floor, opening upon the garden. In warm weather it was a
particularly charming place, for the long windows then always stood
open, and pleasant scents and sounds from the flower-beds and leafy
trees stole in to cheer her solitude. In winter, it was a little more
difficult to keep the rooms warm and cosy; but Lettice was one of the
women who have the knack of making any place where they abide look
home-like and inviting, and in this case her skill had not been spent in
vain, even upon a room for the furniture of which she was not altogether
responsible. Heavy tapestry curtains excluded the draught; a soft rug
lay before the old-fashioned high brass fender, and a bright fire burned
in the grate. Lettice's writing-table and library chair half filled the
room; but there was also a small table heaped high with books and
papers, a large padded leather easy-chair, and a bookcase. The walls
were distempered in a soft reddish hue, and such part of the floor as
was not covered with a bordered tapestry carpet of divers tints had been
stained dark brown. One of Lettice's favorite possessions, a large
autotype of the Sistine Madonna, hung on the wall fronting her
writing-table, so that she could see it in the pauses of her work.

It was at the door of this room that Alan knocked one stormy December
day. The month which Lettice had fixed as the perio