t, that no grief could be ultimate which had that compensatory
refuge.

She was going back to Tante. As the valleys, in their deepened shadows,
streamed past her, Karen remembered that it had hardly been at all of
Tante that she had thought while the long hours passed and her eyes
observed the flying hills and fields. Perhaps she had thought of
nothing. The heavy feeling, as of a stone resting on her heart, of doom,
defeat and bitterness, could hardly have been defined as thought. She
had thought and thought and thought during these last dreadful days;
every mental cog had been adjusted, every wheel had turned; she had held
herself together as never before in all her life, in order to give
thought every chance. For wasn't that to give him every chance? and
wasn't that, above all, to give herself any chance that might still be
left her?

And now the machinery seemed to lie wrecked. There was not an ember of
hope left with which to kindle its activity. How much hope there must
have been to have made it work so firmly and so furiously during these
last days! how much, she hadn't known until her husband had come in last
night, and, at last, spoken openly.

Even Mrs. Forrester's revelations, though they had paralyzed her, had
not put out the fires. She had still hoped that he could deny, explain,
recant, own that he had been hasty, perhaps; perhaps mistaken; give her
some loophole. She could have understood--oh, to a degree almost
abject--his point of view. Mrs. Forrester had accused her of that. And
Tante had accused her of it, too. But no; it had been slowly to freeze
to stillness to hear his clear cold utterance of shameful words, see the
folly of his arrogance and his complacency, realise, in his glacial look
and glib, ironic smile, that he was blind to what he was destroying in
her. For he could not have torn her heart to shreds and then stood
bland, unaware of what he had done, had he loved her. Her young spirit,
unversed in irony, drank in the bitter draught of disillusion. They had
never loved each other; or, worse, far worse, they had loved and love
was this puny thing that a blow could kill. His love for her was dead.

She still trembled when the ultimate realization surged over her,
looking fixedly out of the window lest she should weep aloud.

She had only one travelling companion, an old woman who got out at
Plymouth. Karen had found her curiously repulsive and that was one
reason why she had kept her eyes