h they had been alone--but she had made
no further attempt to keep him. She had just kissed him once, and
listened to his words of passionate love with a grave little smile.
"Only a fortnight, my darling," he had told her. "But we must give it
that. You must be sure." And he had been too much taken up with his
own thoughts to notice the weariness in her eyes.

She said nothing to him of the unread letter lying on her
dressing-table upstairs, and not till long after he had gone did she
pick up the envelope and turn it over and over in her fingers. Then,
at last, she opened it.

It was just in the same vein as all the letters her father was writing
her at this period. Brimming over with hope and confidence and joy and
pleasure; planning fresh beauties for their beloved Blandford--he
always associated Joan with himself in the possession of it; scheming
how she was to come and stay with him for long visits each year after
she was married. It was the letter of a man who had come out of the
darkness of worry into the light of safety; and as in all the others,
there was the inevitable reference to the black times that were over.

Slowly the dusk came down, the shadows deepened in the great trees
outside. The Downs faded into a misty blur, and at length she turned
from the window. In the flickering light of the fire she threw herself
face downwards on her bed. For an hour she lay there motionless, while
the shadows danced merrily around her, and darkness came down outside.
Just every now and then a little pitiful moan came from her lips,
muffled and inarticulate from the depths of the pillow; and once a
great storm of sobs shook her--sobs which drenched the old scented
linen with tears. But for the most part she lay in silence with her
hands clenched and rigid, and thus did she pass along the way of Pain
to her Calvary. . . .

At six o'clock she rose and bathed her face, and powdered her nose as
all normal women must do before facing an unsympathetic world, even if
the torments of Hell have got them on the rack. Then with firm steps
she went downstairs to the drawing-room, and found it empty. Without
faltering she crossed to the piano, and took from the top of a pile of
music "The Garden of Kama." She turned to the seventh song of the
cycle--

"Ah! when Love comes, his wings are swift,
His ways are full of quick surprise;
'Tis well for those who have the gift
To seize him even as he flies. . . ."