towards the garden
gate.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A FOOTSTEP ON THE PATH

Antony was sitting in his cottage. It was quite dusk in the little room,
but he had not troubled to light the lamp. A mood of utter depression was
upon him, though for the life of him he could not tell fully what was
causing it. That very fact increased the depression. There was nothing
definite he could get a grip on, and combat. He was in no worse situation
than he had been in three hours previously, in fact it might be
considered that he was in an infinitely better one, and yet this mood was
less than three hours old.

Of course the thought of the Duchessa was at the root of the depression.
But why? If he met her again--and all things now considered, the meeting
was even more than probable--what earthly difference would it make
whether he met her in his role of Michael Field, gardener, or as Antony
Gray, agent? And yet he knew that it would make a difference. Between the
Duchessa di Donatello and Michael Field there was fixed a great social
gulf. He himself had assured her of that fact. Keeping that fact in view,
he could deceive himself into the belief that it alone would be
accountable for the aloofness of her bearing, for the frigidity of her
manner should they again meet. Oh, he'd pictured the meetings often
enough; pictured, too, and schooled himself to endure, the aloofness, the
frigidity.

"I rubbed it well in that I am only a gardener, a mere labourer," he
would assure his soul, with these imaginary meetings in mind. Of course
he had known perfectly well that he was deceiving himself, yet even that
knowledge had been better than facing the pain of truth.

But now the truth had got to be faced.

There would be the aloofness, sure enough, but there would no longer be
that great social gulf to account for it. The true cause would have to be
acknowledged. She scorned him, firstly on account of his fraud, and
secondly because he had wounded her pride by his quiet deliberate
snubbing of her friendship. Whatever justification she might presently
see for the first offence, it never for an instant occurred to his mind
that she might overlook the second. He had deliberately put a barrier
between them, and it appeared to him now, as it had appeared at the
moment of its placing, utterly and entirely unsurmountable. She would be
civil, of course; there would not be the slightest chances of her
forgetting her manners, but--his mind swung t