ious you should not give in.
Why, even because of the tiredness, even because the cause seems vain,
you must still fight on--wouldn't she have said it? Surely there are
prizes, a daughter, a career, no end! And even they gone--still the self
undimmed, undaunted, that took its drubbing like a man.'

'I know you know I'm all but crazed; you see this wretched mind all
littered and broken down; look at me like that, then. Forget even you
have befriended me and pretended--Why must I blunder on and on like
this? Oh, Grisel, my friend, my friend, if only you loved me!'

Tears clouded her eyes. She turned vaguely as if for a hiding-place.
'We can't talk here. How mad the day is. Listen, listen! I do--I do love
you--mother and woman and friend--from the very moment you came. It's
all so clear, so clear: that, and your miserable "must," my friend.
Come, we will go away by ourselves a little, and talk. That way. I'll
meet you by the gate.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate
together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past a
little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its low flint wall.
Skirting a field of stubble, she struck into a wood by a path that ran
steeply up the hillside. And by and by they came to a glen where the
woodmen of a score of years ago had felled the trees, leaving a green
hollow of saplings in the midst of their towering neighbours.

'There,' she said, holding out her hand to him, 'now we are alone. Just
six hours or so--and then the sun will be there,' she pointed to the
tree-tops to the west, 'and then you will have to go; for good, for
good--you your way, and I mine. What a tangle--a tangle is this life of
ours. Could I have dreamt we should ever be talking like this, you and
I? Friends of an hour. What will you think of me? Does it matter? Don't
speak. Say nothing--poor face, poor hands. If only there were something
to look to--to pray to!' She bent over his hand and pressed it to her
breast. 'What worlds we've seen together, you and I. And then--another
parting.'

They wandered on a little way, and came back and listened to the first
few birds that flew up into the higher branches, noonday being past, to
sing.

They talked, and were silent, and talked again with out question, or
sadness, or regret, or reproach; she mocking even at themselves, mocking
at this 'change'--'Why, and yet without it, would you ever e