"'An enemy hath done this,'" quoted Ellesborough, with an approving smile, as he pointed towards the plain. "But there was a God behind him!"

Rachel laughed. "Well, I've got three fields still to get in," she said. "And they're the best. Goodnight."

She gave him her hand, standing transfigured in the light, the wind blowing her beautiful hair about her.

"May I come and see you?" he asked, rather formally.

She smiled assent.

"Next week everything will be in, and some of it threshed. I shall be freer then. You'll like our place."

He pressed her hand, and she was off, running like a fawn after the retreating pony carriage.

He turned away, a little dazzled and shaken. The image of her on the ridge remained; but what perhaps had struck deepest had been the sweetness of her as she hung above the injured boy. He went slowly towards the camp, conscious that the day now departing had opened a new door in the House of Life.



IV

Ellesborough allowed a week to pass before making the call at Great End he had arranged with Rachel. But at last, when he thought that her harvesting would be really over, he set out on his motor bicycle, one fine evening, as soon as work at the camp was over. According to summer time it was about seven o'clock, and the sun was still sailing clear above the western woods.

Part of his way lay over a broad common chequered with fine trees and groups of trees, some of them of great age; for the rest he ran through a world where harvest in its latest stages was still the governing fact. In some fields the corn was being threshed on the spot, without waiting for the stacks; in others, the last loads were being led; and everywhere in the cleared fields there were scattered figures of gleaners, casting long shadows on the gold and purple carpet of the stubble. For Ellesborough the novelty of this garden England, so elaborately combed and finished in comparison with his own country, was by no means exhausted. There were times when the cottage gardens, the endless hedge-rows, and miniature plantations pleased him like the detail in those early Florentine pictures in the Metropolitan Museum, for which, business man as he was, and accustomed to the wilds, he had once or twice, on visits to New York, discovered in himself a considerable taste. He was a man, indeed, of many aptitudes, and of a loyal and affectionate temper. His father, a country doctor, now growing old, his mother, still pretty at sixty, and his two unmarried sisters were all very dear to him. He wrote to them constantly, and received many letters from them. They belonged to one of the old Unitarian stocks still common in New England; and such stocks are generally conspicuous for high standards and clean living. "Discipline" was among the chief marks of the older generation. A father or mother dreaded an "undisciplined" child, and the word was often on their lips, though in no Pharisaical way; while the fact was evident in their lives, and in those private diaries which they were apt to keep, wherein, up to old age, they jealously watched their own daily thoughts and actions from the same point of view.

And though the younger generation, like the younger generation of Quakers, shows change and some disintegration, the old Puritan traditions and standards are still, as we all know, of great effect among them. Especially with regard to women, and all that concerns them. Among the Ellesborough clan, which was a large one, there prevailed, along with the traditional American consideration for women, and especially among the women of the family themselves—a strict and even severe standard of sexual morals. There was no hypocrisy in it; they talked of it but little, but they lived by it; and their men were brought up in the atmosphere created by it. And as affection and tenderness and self-sacrifice were freely mixed with the asceticism, there was no rebellion—at any rate no open rebellion—among their men folk. The atmosphere created led, no doubt, to certain evasions of the hard problems of life; and to some quiet revaluations of things and persons when the sons of the family came to men's estate. But in general the "ape and tiger," still surviving in the normal human being, had been really and effectively tamed in the Ellesborough race. There was also a sensitive delicacy both of thought and speech among them; answering to more important and tested realities. Their marriages were a success; their children were well brought up, under light but effective control; and, if it be true, as Americans are ready to say, that the old conception of marriage is being slowly but profoundly modified over large sections of their great Commonwealth, towards a laxity undreamt of half a century ago, the Ellesboroughs could neither be taxed nor applauded in the matter. They stood by the old ways, and they stood by them whole-heartedly.

Ellesborough himself, no doubt, had knocked about the world more than most of his kindred, and had learnt to look at many things differently. But essentially, he was the son of his race. His attitude towards women was at once reverential and protective. He believed women were better than men, because practically he had found it so in his own circle; but he held also very strong beliefs, seldom expressed, as to their social disadvantages and their physical weakness. The record of the Germans towards women in France and Flanders, a record he had verified for himself, had perhaps done more than anything else to feed the stern flame of war in his own soul. At thirty-two, he would probably have already been a married man, but for the war. He rather fiercely held that it was a man's duty to marry and have children. But beyond a few passing fancies he had never been in love; and since the American declaration of war, he had been, like his President, out to "make the world safe for democracy"; and the ardour of the struggle had swept his private interests out of sight.

All the same here he was, walking his motor cycle up the field road leading to Great End Farm, and looking eagerly about him. A lonely position, but beautiful! On the woods behind the house he turned a professional eye. Fine timber! The man who was to succeed him at Ralstone would no doubt have the cutting of it. The farm quadrangle, with its sixteenth century barn, out of which the corn seemed to be actually bursting from various open doors and windows, appeared to him through that glamour which, for the intelligent American, belongs to everything that medieval and Elizabethan England has bequeathed to the England of the present. He will back himself, he thinks, to plan and build a modern town better than the Britisher—in any case quicker. But the mosses and tiles of an old Brookshire barn beat him.

Ellesborough paused at the gate to watch two land lassies carrying pails of milk across the yard towards a prolongation of the farm-house, which he supposed was the dairy. Just beyond the farm-yard, two great wheat-stacks were visible; while in the hayfields running up to the woods, large hay-stacks, already nearly thatched, showed dimly in the evening light. And all this was run by women, worked by Women! Well, American women, so he heard from home, were doing the same in the fields and farms of the States. It was all part, he supposed, of a world movement, by which, no less than by the war itself, these great years would be for ever remembered.

The farm-house itself, however, seemed to him from the outside a poor, flimsy thing, unworthy of the old farm buildings. He could see that the walls of it were only a brick thick, and in spite of the pretty curtains, he was struck by the odd feature of the two large windows exactly opposite each other, so that a spectator on either side of the house might look right through it.

"Seems like being in the street. However, if there's nobody to look at you, I suppose it don't matter."

Then he laughed, for just as he led his motor cycle into the yard, and passed the sitting-room window, he was struck by the appearance of two large sheep, who seemed to be actually in the sitting-room, at its farther end. They were standing, he presently perceived, upon the steep down beyond the house, on the slope of which the farm was built; which on the southern side of the farm quadrangle came right up to the house wall. At the same moment he saw a woman inside get up and shoo them from the open window, so that they ran away.

But when Jenny Harberton had admitted him, and he was waiting in the sitting-room, from which the woman he had seen had disappeared, he was in the mood to admire everything. How nice the two women had made it! His own rough life, both before and since the war, had only increased a natural instinct for order and seemliness. The pretty blue paper, the fresh drugget, the photographs on the wall, the flowers, and the delicate neatness of everything delighted him. He went round looking at the pictures and the few books, perfectly conscious that everything which he saw had a more than common interest for him. The room seemed to be telling a story—opening points of view.

"Ah!"

He paused, a broad smile overspreading his bronzed face.

For he had perceived a popular History of the War lying open and face downwards on the table, one that he had recommended to the mistress of the farm. So she had followed his advice. It pleased him particularly! He had gathered that she was never a great reader; still, she was an educated woman, she ought to know something of what her country had done.

And there was actually a piano! He wondered whether she played, or her friend.

Meanwhile Rachel was changing her dress upstairs—rather deliberately. She did not want to look too glad to see her visitor, to flatter him by too much hurry. When he arrived she had just come in from the fields where she had been at the threshing machine all day. It had covered her with dirt and chaff; and the process of changing was only half through when she heard the rattle of Ellesborough's cycle outside. She stood now before the glass, a radiant daughter of air and earth; her veins, as it were, still full of the sheer pleasure of her long day among the stubbles and the young stock. She was tired, of course; and she knew very well that the winter, when it came, would make a great difference, and that much of the work before her would be hard and disagreeable. But for the moment, her deep satisfaction with the life she had chosen, the congruity between it and her, gave her a peculiar charm. She breathed content, and there is no more beautifying thing.

She had thought a good deal about Ellesborough since their meeting; yet not absorbingly, for she had her work to do. She was rather inclined to quarrel with him for having been so long in making his call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse displayed it. The beautiful throat was sunburnt, indeed, but not unbecomingly so; and she was about to fasten round it a slender gold chain, when she suddenly dropped the chain. Some association had passed through her mind which made her shrink from it.

She chose instead a necklace of bluish-green beads, long, and curiously interwoven, which gave a touch of dignity to the plain dress. Then she paused to consider the whole effect, in a spirit of meditation rather than mere vanity. "I wish he knew!" she thought, and the glass reflected a frown of perplexity. Had she been wise, after all, to make such a complete mystery of the past? People in and about Ipscombe would probably know some time—what all her Canadian friends knew. And then, the thought of the endless explanations and gossip, of the horrid humiliation involved in any renewed contact whatever with the ugly things she had put behind her, roused a sudden, surging disgust.

"Yes, I was quite right," she thought vehemently. "I was quite right!"

Voices in the room downstairs! That meant that Janet had gone in to greet the visitor. Should they ask him to stay for supper? The vicar was coming, and his pious little sister. There would be quite enough to eat. Cold ham, potatoes and salad, with their own butter and bread—Janet made beautiful bread—was enough for anybody in war time. Rachel was in the mood to feel a certain childish exultation in the plenty of the farm, amid the general rationing. The possession of her seven milch cows, the daily pleasure of the milk, morning and evening, the sight of the rich separated cream, and of the butter as it came fresh from the churn, the growing weight and sleekness of the calves; all these things gave her a warm sense of protection against the difficulties and restrictions of the war. She and Janet were "self-suppliers." No need to bother about ounces of butter, or spoonfuls of cream. Of course they sold all they could, but they could still feed their few guests well—better, perhaps, than any of the folk in the villa houses round Millsborough.

"Yes! and no one's leave to ask!"

She threw out her arms in a vehement gesture as she turned away from the glass. It was the gesture of a wild bird taking flight.

By which, however, she was not hurling defiance at the gentle but most efficient little lady who represented the Food Control of the neighbourhood, and the mere sight of whom was enough to jog uneasy consciences in the matter of rations. Rachel was long since on the best of terms with her.

* * * * *

Captain Ellesborough was asked to stay to supper, and gladly accepted. The vicar and his young sister arrived and were introduced to the American. Betty and Jenny, alarmed at so much company and the quality of it, hurriedly asked to be allowed to take their meal in the tiny scullery behind the living room. But the democratic and dissenting Janet would not hear of it. There was room for everybody, she said, and while she lived in it there should only be one table for all who worked on the farm. If the vicar and Miss Shenstone objected, she was sorry for them. But they wouldn't object.

So the small living room of the farm was soon full of a merry company: the two mistresses, in their Sunday frocks, the land girls in their uniforms, the young vicar in a short coat and round collar, his little sister of nineteen, who was training to be a missionary, and carried about with her already the sweet and dedicated look of her calling; and Ellesborough, a striking and manly figure in full khaki. Ellesborough was on Rachel's right, the vicar on Janet's; Miss Shenstone sat between the two girls, and was so far from objecting to their company that she no sooner found she was to sit next the daughter of her brother's handy-man than her childish face flushed with pleasure. She had seen Jenny already at her brother's Bible-class, and she had been drawn to her. Something in the character of the labourer's daughter seemed to make a special appeal to the delicate and mystical temper of the vicar's sister, in whom the ardour of the "watcher for souls" was a natural gift. Jenny seemed to be aware of it. She was flushed and a little excited, alternately shy and communicative—like the bird under fascination, already alive to the signal of its captor. At any rate, Margaret Shenstone kept both her companions happy through the meal.

The vicar employed himself in vigorously making friends with Janet Leighton, keenly alive all the time to that vivid and flower-like vision of Miss Henderson at the farther end of the table. But some instinct warned him that beside the splendid fellow in khaki his own claim on her could be but a modest one. He must watch his opportunity. It was natural that certain misgivings had already begun to rise in the mind of his elder sister, Eleanor, who was his permanent companion and housekeeper at the vicarage. For why should her brother be so specially assiduous in the harvest operations at Great End? She was well aware that it was the right and popular thing for the young clergy who were refused service at the front to be seen in their shirt sleeves as agricultural volunteers, or in some form of war work. A neighbouring curate in whom she was greatly interested spent the greater part of his week, for instance, on munition work at a national factory. She thought him a hero. But if it was to be harvesting, then it seemed to her that her brother should have divided his help more evenly among the farms of the village. She was afraid of "talk." And it troubled her greatly that neither Miss Henderson nor Miss Leighton came to church.

Meanwhile, the vicar, like a wise man, was securing the position with Janet. What he wished, what he was really driving at, he would not let himself inquire. What he knew was that no woman had ever fluttered his quiet mind as Miss Henderson had fluttered it during these summer weeks. To watch her, erect and graceful, "pitching" the sheaves on to the harvest cart, where he and a labourer received and packed them; to be privileged to lead the full cart home, with her smile and thanks at the barn door for reward, or to stand with her while she proudly watched her new reaping machine, with the three fine horses abreast, sweeping round her biggest field, while the ripe sheaves fell beside it, as of old they fell beside the reapers that Hoephoestus wrought in gleaming gold on the shield of Achilles; and then perhaps to pay a last visit with her to the farm buildings in the warm dusk and watch the cattle coming in from the fields and the evening feed, and all the shutting up for the night after the long, hot, busy day: these things had lately made a veritable idyll of the vicar's life. He felt as though a hundred primitive sensations and emotions, that he had only talked of or read about before, had at last become real to him. Oxford memories revived. He actually felt a wish to look at his Virgil or Theocritus again, such as had never stirred in him since he had packed his Oxford books to send home, after the sobering announcement of his third class. After all, it seemed these old fellows knew something about the earth and its joys!

So that a golden light lay over these past weeks. And in the midst of it stood the figure of a silent and—as far as he was concerned—rather difficult woman, without which there would have been no transfiguring light at all. He confessed to himself that she had never had much to say to him. But wherever she was she drew the male creature after her. There was no doubt as to that. She was a good employer—fair, considerate, intelligent; but it was the woman—so the vicar believed—who got her way.

From which it will be seen that Miss Eleanor Shenstone had some reason for misgiving, and that the vicar's own peace of mind was in danger. His standards also were no longer what they were. He had really ceased to care that Miss Leighton was a Unitarian!

"I suppose you have been horribly busy?" said Rachel to Ellesborough, when, thanks to the exertions of Janet and the two girls, everybody had been provided with a first course.

"Not more than usual. Do you mean—" He looked at her, smiling, and Rachel's eyebrows went up slightly. "Ah, I see—you thought I had forgotten?"

"Oh, no," she said indifferently. "It is a long way to come."

He flushed a little.

"That never occurred to me for a moment!" he said with emphasis. "But you said you would have finished with the harvest in a week. So I waited. I didn't want to be a nuisance."

At which she smiled, a smile that overflowed eyes and lips, and stirred the senses of the man beside her.

"How is the prisoner?"

"Poor boy! He died the day before yesterday. We did everything we could, but he had no chance from the first. Hard lines!"

"Why, he might have been home next year!"

"He might, indeed. Yes, Miss Henderson, it'll be peace next year—perhaps this year! Who knows! But I hope I'll have a look in first. I've got my orders. As soon as they've appointed my successor here, I'm off. About a month, I suppose. They've accepted me for the Air Force."

His eyes glowed. Rachel said nothing. She felt hurt that he expressed no regret at going. Then the vicar struck into the conversation with some enthusiastic remarks about the steady flowing in of the American army. That, indeed, was the great, the overpowering fact of these August days. Ellesborough responded eagerly, describing the huge convoy with which he himself had come over; and that amazing, that incredible march across three thousand miles of sea and land, which every day was pouring into the British Isles, and so into France, some 15,000 men—the flower of American manhood, come to the rescue of the world. He told the great story well, with the graphic phrases of a quick mind, well fed on facts, yet not choked by them. The table hung on him. Even little Jenny, with parted lips, would not have missed a word.

He meanwhile was led on—for he was not a man of facile or boastful speech—by the eyes of Rachel Henderson, and those slight gestures or movements by which from time to time when the talk flagged she would set it going again.

Margaret Shenstone was particularly stirred.

"What friends we shall be!" she said presently, with a long, quivering breath—"I mean America and England. Friends for ever! And we quarrelled once. That's so wonderful. That shows good does come out of evil!"

"I should jolly well think so," said Ellesborough, looking kindly at the young girl. "Why, if it hadn't been for this war, millions of these boys who are coming over now would never have seen England or Europe at all. It'll change the face of everything!"

"Only we must play up," said the vicar anxiously. "We must get rid of our abominable shyness, and let your people really see how we really welcome them."

Rachel gave a little defiant shake of the head.

"America's got to thank us, too!" she said, with a challenging look at Ellesborough. "We've borne it for four years. Now it's your turn!"

"Well, here we are," said Ellesborough quietly, "up to the neck. But—of course—don't thank us. It's our business just as much as yours."

The talk dropped a moment, and Janet took advantage of it to bring in coffee as a finish to the meal. Under cover of the slight bustle, Ellesborough said to Rachel, in a voice no longer meant for the table,—

"Could you spare me a letter sometimes, Miss Henderson—at the front?"

He had both elbows on the table, and was playing with a cigarette. There was nothing the least patronizing or arrogant in his manner. But there was a male note in it—perhaps a touch of self-confidence—which ruffled her.

"Oh, I am a bad letter-writer," she said, as she got up from the table. "Shall we go and look at the cows?"

They all went out into the warm September night. Ellesborough followed Rachel, cigarette in hand, his strong mouth twisting a little. The night was almost cloudless. The pale encircling down, patched at intervals with dark hanging woods, lay quiet under a sky full of faint stars. The scent of the stubblefields, of the great corn-stack just beyond the farmyard, of the big barn so full that the wide wooden doors could not be closed, was mingled with the strong ammonia smells of the farm-yard, and here and there with the sweetness left in the evening air by the chewing cows on their passage to the cow-house on the farther side of the yard.

Rachel led the way to the cow-house—a vast fifteenth-century barn, with an interlacing forest of timber in its roof, where the six cows stood ranged, while Janet and the two land lassies, with Hastings the bailiff to help them, were changing the litter and filling up the racks with hay. Rachel went along the line pointing out the beauties of each separate beast to Ellesborough, and caressing two little calves whom Jenny was feeding by hand. Ellesborough was amused by her technical talk and her proprietor's airs. It seemed to him a kind of play-acting, but it fascinated him. Janet had brought in a lantern, and the light and shade of it seemed to have been specially devised to bring into relief Rachel's round and tempting beauty, the bright brown of her hair where it curled on the temples, and the lovely oval of the cheeks. Ellesborough watched her, now passing into deep shadow, and now brilliantly lit up, as the light of the lantern caught her; overhead, the criss-cross of the arching beams as of some primitive cathedral, centuries old; and on either side the dim forms of the munching cattle, and the pretty movements of the girls busy with their work.

"Take care," laughed Rachel as she passed him. "There are horrid holes in this floor. I haven't had time to mend them."

As she spoke, she slipped and almost fell. Ellesborough threw out a quick hand and caught her by the arm. She smiled into his face.

"Neatly done!" she said composedly, submitting to be led by him over a very broken bit of pavement near the door. His hand held her firmly. Nor did she make any effort to release herself till they were outside. Here were the vicar and his sister waiting to say good-night—the vicar much chagrined that he had seen so little of his chief hostess, and inclined to feel that his self-sacrificing attention to Miss Leighton at supper had been but poorly rewarded. Rachel, however, saw that he was out of humour, and at once set herself to appease him. And in the few minutes which elapsed before she parted with him at the gate she had quite succeeded.

Then she turned to Ellesborough.

"Shall we go up the hill a little?"

They slipped through a side gate of the farmyard, crossed a field, and found themselves on an old grass road leading gently upward along the side of the down into the shadow of the woods. The still, warm night held them enwrapped. Rachel had thrown a white scarf over her head and throat, which gave a mysterious charm to the face within it. As she strolled beside her hew friend she played him with all the arts of a woman resolved to please. And he allowed himself to be handled at her will. He told her about his people, and his friends, about the ideas and ambitions, also, with which he had come to Europe, which were now in abeyance, but were to spring to active life after the war. Forestry on a great scale; a part to be played in the preservation and development of the vast forest areas of America which had been so wilfully wasted; business and patriotism combined; fortune possible; but in any case the public interest served. He talked shrewdly, but also with ardour and imagination; she was stirred, excited even; and all the time she liked the foreignness of his voice, the outline of his profile against the sky, and all the other elements of his physical presence.

But in the midst of his castle-building he broke off.

"However, I'm a silly fool to talk like this. I'm going out to the front directly. Perhaps my bullet's waiting for me."

"Oh, no!" she said involuntarily—"no!"

"I hope not. I don't want to die just yet. I want to get married, for one thing."

He spoke lightly, and she laughed.

"Well, that's easy enough."

He shook his head, but said nothing. They walked on till they reached the edge of the hill, when Rachel, out of breath, sat down on a fallen log to rest a little. Below them stretched the hollow upland, with its encircling woods and its white stubble fields. Far below lay the dark square of the farm, with a light in one of its windows.

Rachel pointed to the grass road by which they had come.

"We haven't seen the ghost!"

He asked her for the story, and she told it. By now she had pieced it all together; and it seemed to Ellesborough that it had a morbid fascination for her.

"He dragged himself down this very path," she said. "They tracked him by the blood stains; his wounds dripped all along it. And then he fell, just under my cart-shed. It was a horrible, bitter night. Of course the silly people here say they hear groans and dragging steps: That's all nonsense, but I sometimes wish it hadn't happened at my farm."

He couldn't help laughing gently at her foolishness.

"Why, it's a great distinction to have a ghost!"

She disagreed—decidedly.

"Any one can have my ghost that wants. I'm awfully easily scared."

"Are you?" There was a deep note in his voice. "No, I don't believe that. I'm sure you're a plucky woman. I know you are!"

She laughed out.

"How do you know?"

"Why, no one but a plucky woman could have taken this farm and be working it as you're doing."

"That's not pluck," she said, half scornfully. "But if it is—well, I've got plenty of pluck of that kind. But I am often scared, downright scared, about nothing. It's just fear, that's what it is."

"Fear of what?"

"I don't know."

She spoke in a sombre, shrinking tone, which struck him uncomfortably. But when he tried further to discover what she meant, she would say nothing more. He noticed, indeed, that she would often seem to turn the talk upon herself, only to cut it short again immediately. She offered him openings, and then he could make nothing of them; so that when they reached the outskirts of the farm on their return, he had given her all the main outlines of his own history, and she had said almost nothing of hers.

But all the same the walk had drawn them much nearer.

He stopped her at the little gate to say,—

"I'm going to ask you again—I want you to write to me when I'm in France."

And this time she said almost eagerly,—

"Yes, I'll write; indeed I'll write! But you'll come over again before you go?"

"Rather," he said joyously; "rather! Why, there's a month. You'll be tired of me before you've done."

A few minutes later she was standing in her own little room, listening to the retreating rush of his motor-cycle down the road. There was a great tumult in her mind.

"Am I falling in love with him? Am I—am I?"

But in the dark, when she had put out her light, the cry that shaped itself in her mind was identical with that sudden misgiving of the afternoon, when on Ellesborough's arrival she had first heard his voice downstairs talking to Janet.

"I wish he knew!" But this time it was no mere passing qualm. It had grown into something intense and haunting.

* * * * *

On this same September afternoon, a dark-eyed, shabby woman, with a little girl, alighted at Millsborough Station. They were met by a man who had been lounging about the station for some time and whose appearance had attracted some attention. "See him at a distance, and you might take him for a lord; but get him close, my word!—" said the station-master to the booking-clerk, with a shrug, implying many things.

"Wouldn't give a bob for his whole blessed turn-out," said the booking-clerk. "But right you are, when you sort of get the hang of him, far enough away on the other platform, might be a dook!"

Meanwhile, the man had shouldered some of the bags and parcels brought by the woman and the child, though hardly his fair share of them; and they finally reached the exit from the station.

"If you're going into the town, the bus will be here in a few minutes," said a porter civilly to the woman. "It'll help you with all those things."

The man gruffly answered for her that they preferred to walk, and they started, the woman and the child dragging wearily beside him.

"Now, you've got to be content with what I've found for you," he said to her roughly as they reached the first houses of the town. "There isn't scarcely a lodging or a cottage to be had. Partly it's the holidays still, and partly it's silly folk like you—scared of raids."

"I couldn't go through another winter like last, for Nina's sake," said the woman plaintively.

"Why, you silly goose, there won't be any raids this winter. I've told you so scores of times. We've got the upper hand now, and the Boche will keep his planes at home. But as you won't listen to me, you've got to have your way, I suppose. Well, I've got you rooms of a sort. They'll have to do. I haven't got money enough for anything decent."

The woman made no reply, and to the porter idly looking after them they were soon lost from sight in the gathering dusk of the road.



V

The little town of Millsborough was en fete. There was a harvest festival going on, and the County Agricultural Committee had taken the opportunity to celebrate the successful gathering of the crops, and the part taken in it by the woman land-workers under their care. They had summoned the land lasses from far and wide; in a field on the outskirts of the town competitions had been in full swing all the morning, and now there were to be speeches in the market-place, and a final march of land girls, boy scouts, and decorated wagons to the old Parish Church, where a service was to be held.

All Millsborough, indeed, was in the streets to look at the procession, and the crowd was swelled by scores of cadets from a neighbouring camp, who were good-heartedly keeping the route, and giving a military air to the show. But the flower-decked wagons were the centre of interest. The first in the line was really a brilliant performance. It was an old wagon of Napoleonic days, lent by a farmer, whose forebears had rented the same farm since William and Mary. Every spoke of the wheels blazed with red geraniums; there was a fringe of heather along the edge of the cart, while vegetables, huge marrows, turnips, carrots, and onions dangled from its sides, and the people inside sat under a nodding canopy of tall and splendid wheat, mixed with feathery barley. But the passengers were perhaps the most attractive thing about it. They were four old women in lilac sunbonnets. They were all over seventy, and they had all worked bravely in the harvest. The crowd cheered them vociferously, and they sat, looking timidly out on the scene with smiling eyes and tremulous lips, their grey hair blowing about their wrinkled, wholesome faces.

Beside the wagon walked a detachment of land girls. One of them was the granddaughter of one of the old women, and occasionally a word would pass between them.

"Eh, Bessie, but I'd like to git down! They mun think us old fools, dizened up this way."

"No, gran; you must ride. You're the very best bit of the show. Why, just listen how the folk cheer you!"

The old woman sighed.

"I'd like to look at it mysel'," she said with a childish plaintiveness. But her tall granddaughter, in full uniform, with a rake over her shoulder, thought this a foolish remark, and made no reply.

In the second wagon, Rachel Henderson in full land-dress—tunic, knee-breeches, and leggings—stood in the front of the cart, guiding two white horses, their manes and tails gaily plaited with ribbons, and scarlet badges on their snowy heads.

"Eh, but yon's a fine woman!" said an old farmer of the humbler sort to his neighbour. "Yo'll not tell me she's a land lassie?"

"Noa, noa; she's the new farmer at Great End—a proud body, they say, an' a great hustler! The men say she's allus at 'em. But they don't mind her neither. She treats 'em well. Them's her two land girls walking beside."

For Betty and Jenny mounted guard, their harvest rakes on their shoulders, beside their mistress, who attracted all eyes as she passed, and knew it. Behind her in the cart sat Janet Leighton; and the two remaining seats were filled by the Vicar of Ipscombe and Lady Alicia Shepherd, the wife of the owner of Great End Farm and of the middle-sized estate to which the farm belonged.

Lady Alicia was a thin woman, with an excitable temperament, to judge from her restless mouth and eyes, which were never still for a moment. She was very fashionably dressed and held a lace parasol. The crowd scarcely recognized her, which annoyed her, for in her own estimation she was an important member of the Women's Committee which looked after the land girls. The war had done a great deal for Lady Alicia. It had dragged her from a sofa, where she was rapidly becoming a neurasthenic invalid, and had gradually drilled her into something like a working day. She lived in a flurry of committees; but as committees must exist, and Lady Alicias must apparently be on them; she had found a sort of vocation, and with the help of other persons of more weight she had not done badly.

She did not quite understand how it was that she found herself in Miss Henderson's wagon. The committee had refused to have a wagon of its own, and the good-natured vicar had arranged it for her. She did not herself much like Miss Henderson. Her husband had sent her to call upon the new tenants, and she had been much puzzled. They were ladies, she supposed. They spoke quite nicely, and Miss Henderson seemed to be the daughter of a clergyman. But she was afraid they were dreadful Socialists! She had talked to Miss Henderson about the awful—the wicked—wages that the Brookshire board had just fixed for the labourer.

"My husband says they'll simply crush the life out of farming. We shall all be ruined, and where will the labourer be then?"

And Miss Henderson had looked quite unpleasant. It was high time, she said, that the labourer should have enough to live on—decently; really thrown the word at you. And Colonel Shepherd had told his wife that he understood from Hastings Miss Henderson had raised her wages before the award of the Wages Board. Well, he only hoped the young woman had got some money behind her, otherwise she would be finding herself in Queer Street and he would be whistling for his rent.

The wagons drew up in the centre of the market-place, and the band which the cadets had brought with them struck up "God Save the King." Lady Alicia rose at once and nudged her little boy, whom she had brought with her, to take off his cap. She looked approvingly over the crowd, which was growing denser and denser every moment. It was so that she really enjoyed the populace—at a safe distance—and ready to lend itself to the blandishments of its natural leaders. Where was her husband, Colonel Shepherd? Of course they would want him to speak at some time in the proceedings. But she looked for him in vain.

Meanwhile, the speaking was beginning from the first cart. A land girl who had played a rousing part in the recruiting campaign of the early summer was speaking in a high voice, clearly heard by the crowd. She was tall and pretty, and spoke without a sign of hesitation or self-consciousness. She gloried in the harvest, in the splendid news from the war, in the growth of the Woman's Land Army. "We've just been proud to do our bit at home while our boys have been fighting over there. They'll be home soon, perhaps, and won't we give them a welcome! And we'll show them the harvest that we've helped to reap—the biggest harvest that England's ever known!—the harvest that's going to beat the Boche." The young simple voice flowed on, with its simple story and its note of enthusiasm, and sometimes of humour. "It's hard work, but we love it! It's cold work often, but we love it! The horses and the cows and the pigs—they're naughty often, but they're nice!—-yes, the pigs, too. It's the beasts and the fields and the open air we love!"

Betty looked at Jenny with a grin.

"Jenny!—them pigsties yesterday; d'ye think she's ever cleaned one out?"

"I know she has," said Jenny confidentially. "She's Farmer Green's girl, out Ralstone way. Ee says there ain't nothing she can't do. Ee don't want no men while he's got 'er. They offered him soldiers, and ee wouldn't have 'em."

* * * * *

"Silly, sentimental young woman," said a tall man, with a pipe in his mouth, who had just lounged up to the outskirts of the crowd, from a side street. "Who's she going to take in here? What's the good of talking poetry about farming to a lot of country people? A London shop-girl, I guess. What does she know about it?"

"You bets she knows a lot," said a young man beside him, who, to judge from his uniform, was one of the Canadians employed at Ralstone camp. He had been taken with the "sentimental young woman," and was annoyed by the uncivil remarks of his neighbour. "Wonder what farm she's on?"

"Oh, you know these parts?" said the other, removing his pipe for a moment and looking down on his companion.

"Well, not exactly." The reply was hesitating. "My grandfather went out to Canada from a place near here sixty years ago. I used to hear him and my mother talk about Millsborough."

"Beastly hole!" said the other, replacing his pipe.

"I don't agree with you at all," said the other angrily. "It's as nice a little town of its size as you'd find anywhere."

The other shrugged his shoulders. A man a few yards off in the crowd happened at that moment to be looking in the direction of the two speakers. It was the ticket-collector at the station, enjoying an afternoon off. He recognized the taller of the two men as the "dook" he had seen at Millsborough station about a week ago. The man's splendid carriage and iron-grey head were not to be mistaken—also his cadaverous and sickly look, and his shabby clothes. The ticket-collector saw that the man was holding the dark-eyed, "furrin-looking" child by the hand, which the woman he met had brought down with her. "Furriners," he supposed, all of them; part of that stream of fugitives from air raids that had been flowing out of London during the preceding winter, and was now flowing out again, as the next winter approached, though in less volume. Every house and lodging in Millsborough was full, prices had gone up badly, and life in Millsborough was becoming extremely uncomfortable for its normal inhabitants—"all along o' these panicky aliens!" thought the ticket-collector, resentfully, as he looked at the tall man.

The tall man, however, was behaving as though the market-place belonged to him, talking to his neighbours, who mostly looked at him askance, and every now and then breaking into a contemptuous laugh, provoked apparently by the eloquence of the young woman in the wagon. Meanwhile the little girl whose hand he held was trying to pull him into a better place for seeing the rest of the procession. For from the place where they stood on the outskirts of the crowd, the foremost wagon with its nodding wheat and sheaves, its speaker, its old women, and its bodyguard of girls entirely hid the cart behind it.

"Dis way, pappa, dis way," said the child, dragging him. He let her draw him, and suddenly from behind the speaker's cart there emerged the second wagon with its white horses; Rachel Henderson, the observed of all beholders, standing flushed and smiling, with the reins in her hands, the vicar just behind her, and Lady Alicia's lace parasol.

"My God!" said the man.

His sudden start, and clutch at the child's hand made the child cry out. He checked her with a savage word, and while she whimpered unheeded, he stood motionless, sheltering himself behind a girl with a large hat who stood in front of him, his eyes fixed on the Great End wagon. A ghastly white had replaced the patchy red on his cheeks, and had any careful observer chanced to notice him at the moment, he or she would have been struck by the expression of his face—as of some evil, startled beast aware of its enemy, and making ready to spring.

But the expression passed. With a long breath, Roger Delane pulled himself together.

"Hold your noise, Nina," he said roughly to the child. "If you'll be a good girl, I'll put you on my shoulder."

The child stopped crying at once, and Delane, raising her on to his shoulder, pulling his own soft hat over his eyes and placing the child so that her dress concealed his own features. Then he resumed an excited scrutiny of the Great End wagon. At the same moment he saw a man in uniform making his way through the crowd towards Miss Henderson who was waving to him. An officer—an American officer. Delane recognized at once the high collar and the leathern peak to the cap.

The crowd had already begun to cheer him. He reached the Great End wagon, and its mistress, all smiles, bent over to speak to him. She and the vicar seemed to be giving directions, to which the American with a laughing shrug assented, going off to the front wagon, evidently in obedience to orders. There the girl speaker had just sat down amid a hearty cheer from the crowd; and the chairman of the meeting, a burly farmer, eagerly came to the side of the wagon, and helped the American officer into the cart. Then with a stentorian voice the chairman announced that Captain Ellesborough from Ralstone camp had come "to tell us what America is doing!" A roar from the crowd. Ellesborough saluted gaily, and then his hands in his pockets began to talk to them. His speech, which was a racy summary of all that America was doing to help the Allies, was delivered to a ringing accompaniment of cheers from the thronged market-place, rising to special thunder when the captain dwelt on the wheat and bacon that America was pouring across the Atlantic to feed a hungry Europe.

"We've tightened our own belts already; we can tighten them, I dare say, a few holes more. Everybody in America's growing something, and making something. When a man thinks he's done enough, and wants to rest a bit, the man next him gets behind him with a bradawl. There's no rest for anybody. We've just registered thirteen million men. That sounds like business, doesn't it? No slacking there! Well, we mean business. And you mean business. And the women mean business."

Then a passage about the women, which set the land girls grinning at each other, and at the men in the crowd, ending in three cheers for Marshal Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, which came echoing back from the Fourteenth Century church and the old houses which ringed the market-place.

All eyes were on the speaker, no one noticed the tall man with the olive-skinned child on his shoulder. He himself, with thumping pulses, never ceased to watch the figures and movements in the second wagon. He saw Miss Henderson sit down and another woman also in tunic and knickers take her place. He watched her applauding the speaker, or talking with the clergyman behind her, or the lady with the lace parasol. And when the speech was over, amid a hurricane of enthusiasm, when the resolution had been put and carried, and the bells in the old church-tower began to ring out a deafening joy-peal above the dispersing crowd, he saw the American officer jump down from the speaker's wagon and return to Miss Henderson. Steps were brought, and Captain Ellesborough handed out the ladies. Then he and Rachel Henderson went away side by side, laughing and talking, towards the porch of the church, where Delane lost them from sight.

The market-place emptied rapidly. The decorated wagons moved off to the field where the competitions had been held in the morning, and some of the crowd with them. Another portion streamed into the church, and soon only a few scattered groups were left.

The tall man put down the child, and was seized with a fit of coughing, which left him more pallid and sunken-eyed than before. When it was over, he noticed a group of elderly labourers. They had come late into the meeting, and were making for the bar of the Cow-roast Inn, but before they entered it Delane went up to one of them.

"I'm a stranger here," he said carelessly. "Can you tell me who all these people were in the wagons?"

The man addressed—who was old Halsey—gave the speaker a reconnoitring look.

"Well, I dunno neither," he said cautiously, "leastways, many of 'em. There was my old missus, in the first one. She didn't want to go, dressed up in them sunbonnets. But they made such a fuss of her, she had to. There was Farmer Broughton I seed, an' I don't know nobody else."

"Well, but the second wagon?" said Delane impatiently.

"Oh, the second wagon. Why, that was Miss Henderson. Don't ye know 'er? I works for 'er?"

"Is she on the land?"

The old man laughed.

"That she be! She's a farmer, is Miss Henderson, an' she frames pretty fair. She don't know much yet, but what she don't know Hastings tells, her."

"Who's Hastings?"

"Why, her bailiff, to be sure. You do be a stranger, not knowin' Muster Hastings?"

"I'm just here for a few weeks. It's a rum business, isn't it, this of women taking farms?"

Halsey nodded reflectively.

"Aye, it's a queer business. But they do be cleverer at it than ye'd think. Miss Henderson's a good head-piece of her own."

"And some money, I suppose?"

"Well, that's not my look out, is it, so long as I gits my wages? I dessay Colonel Shepherd, ee sees to that. Well, good-day to you. I'm goin' in to get summat to drink. It's a dryin' wind to-day, and a good bit walk from Ipscombe."

"Is that where you live?"

"Aye—an' Miss Henderson's place is just t'other side. A good mile to Ipscombe, and near a mile beyont. I didn't want to come, but my old woman she nagged me to come an' see her 'ome."

And with another nod, the old man turned into the public, where his mates were already enjoying the small beer of the moment.

For a few minutes, Delane strolled down the main road in silence, the child playing at his heels. Then he turned abruptly, called the child, and went up the side street from which he had appeared when the meeting began.

A quarter of an hour later he returned to the market-place alone. The service in the church was still going on. He could hear them singing, the harvest hymn: "We plough the fields and scatter—The good seed on the land." But he did not stop to listen. He walked on rapidly in the direction of Ipscombe.

Delane found the main line from Millsborough to Ipscombe dotted at intervals with groups of persons returning from the harvest festival—elderly women with children, a few old labourers, a few soldiers on leave, with a lively fringe of noisy boys and girls skirmishing round and about their elders, like so many young animals on the loose. The evening light was failing. The pools left by a passing shower, gleamed along the road, and the black elms and oaks, scarcely touched as yet by autumn gold, stood straight and sharp against a rainy sky.

The tall, slouching man scrutinized the various groups as he passed them, as though making up his mind whether to address them or not. He wore a shabby greatcoat, warmer than the day demanded, and closely buttoned across the chest. The rest of his dress, felt hat, dark trousers, and tan boots, had all of it come originally from expensive shops, but was now only just presentable. The one thing in good condition about him was the Malacca cane he carried, which had a carved jade handle, and was altogether out of keeping with his general appearance.

All the same there was something striking in that appearance. Face, figure and dress represented the wreck of more than one kind of distinction. The face must once have been exceptionally handsome, before an underlying commonness and coarseness had been brought out or emphasized by developments of character and circumstance. The mouth was now loose and heavy. The hazel eyes had lost their youth, and were disfigured by the premature wrinkles of either ill-health or dissipation. None the less, a certain carriage of the head and shoulders, a certain magnificence in the whole general outline of the man, especially in the defiant eyes and brow, marked him out from the crowd, and drew attention of strangers.

Many persons looked at him, as he at them, while he swung slowly along the road. At last he crossed over towards an elderly man in company with a young soldier, who was walking lamely with a stick.

"Excuse me," he said, formally, addressing the elder man, "but am I right for Ipscombe?"

"That you are, muster. The next turnin' to the right'll bring yer to it." Peter Betts looked the stranger over as he spoke, with an inquisitive eye.

"You've come from the meeting, I suppose?"

"Ay. We didn't go to the service. That worn't in our line. But we heerd the speeches out o' doors."

"The carts were fine!—especially the second one."

"Ay—that's our missis. She and the two girls done the dressin' o' the cart."

"What's her name?"

"Well, her name's Henderson," said the old man, speaking with an amiable, half careless detachment, the manner rather of a philosopher than a gossip.

"She's the farmer's wife?"

"Noa, she ain't. She's the farmer herself—'at's what she is. She's took the farm from Colonel Shepherd—she did—all on her own. To be sure there's Miss Leighton as lives with her. But it do seem to me as Miss Henderson's—as you might say—the top 'un. And me an' James Halsey works for her."

"Miss Henderson? She's not married?"

"Not she!" said old Betts emphatically. "She's like a lot o' women nowadays, I guess. They doan't want to be married."

"Perhaps nobody 'as wanted to marry 'em, dad!" said his elder son, grinning at his own stale jest.

Betts shook a meditative head.

"Noa—yo'll not explain it that way," he said mildly. "Some of 'em's good-looking—Miss Henderson 'ersel', by token. A very 'andsome up-standin' young woman is Miss Henderson."

Delane followed all these remarks with close attention, and continued a rather skilful examination. He learnt that Great End was a farm of about two hundred and fifty acres, that Miss Henderson seemed to have "lots o' money," and had sold her autumn crops very well, that Miss Leighton managed the stock and the dairy with the help of two land-girls, and it was thought by the village that the two ladies "was doin' fine."

Arrived at the village, Betts turned into his cottage, with a nod to his companion, and Delane went on his way.

The lane on the farther side of the village was dark under branching trees. Delane stumbled along it, coughing at intervals, and gripped by the rising chill of the September evening. A little beyond the trees he caught sight of the farm against the hill. Yes, it was lonesome, as the old man said, but a big, substantial-looking place. Rachel's place! And Rachel had "lots o' money"—and as to her health and well-being, why the sight of her on that cart was enough. That vision of her indeed—of the flushed, smiling face under the khaki hat, of the young form in the trim tunic and leggings, and, not least, of the admiring crowd about her, kept returning upon the man's furious sense as something not to be borne, a recurrent blow from which he could not escape.

And that American chap—that Yankee officer who had walked off with her to the church—what was the meaning of that? They were not strangers, that was plain. She had beckoned to him from the cart. The manner of their short conversation, indeed, showed them well acquainted. She told him to go and speak—and he had gone—with alacrity—smiling back at her. Courting, no doubt! Rachel could never let a man alone—or live, without a man after her. A brutal phrase shaped itself—a vile epithet or two—flung into the solitude of the lane.

When he emerged from the trees into a space of greater light between two stubble fields, Delane suddenly drew a letter from his pocket. While Rachel was flaunting with "lots of money"—this was how his affairs were going.

"DEAR ROGER,—I can do nothing for you. Your demands are simply insatiable. If you write me any more begging letters, or if you attempt again to force your way into my house as you did last week, I shall tell the bank to cancel your allowance, and wash my hands of you altogether. My husband's determined to stop this kind of thing. Don't imagine you can either threaten us, or come round us. We have tried again and again to help and reform you. It is no good—and now we give you up. You have worn us out. If you are wise, you will not answer this—and if you keep quiet the allowance shall be continued. MARIANNE TILNEY."

That was a nice letter to get from a man's only sister! Allowance! What was L100 a year to a woman as rich as Marianne? And what was the use of L100 a year to him, with living at the price it was now? His wretched pittance besides, doled out to him by his father's trustees under his father's will, brought his whole income up to L300 a year. How was a man to live on that, and support a woman and child?

And here was Rachel—free—bursting with health—and possessed of "lots of money." She thought, no doubt, that she had done with him—thrust him out of her life altogether. He'd let her see! Whose fault was it that he had taken up with Anita? Nagging, impossible creature!—with her fine ladyisms and her tempers, and her insolent superior ways!

He walked on, consumed with a bitterness which held him like a physical anguish. By now he had reached the farm gate. The sunset had cleared and deepened. Great rosy thunder-clouds topped the down, and strong lights were climbing up the bronzed masses of wood behind the house. No one to be seen. At Millsborough they could hardly be out of church yet. He had time before him. He walked cautiously up the farm-lane, diverging to the left as he reached the buildings so as to escape the notice of any one who might be left in charge. As he slipped under the large cart-shed which backed on the cow-house, he heard somebody whistling inside. It was old Halsey, who had done the afternoon milking in the absence of the girls. Delane could hear the movements of the labourer, and the munching of the cows. A little farther on was the stable, and two horses' heads, looking pensively out from the open half of the door. Delane peered into the stable with the eye of one to whom all farming matters were familiar. Three fine horses—d—-d fine horses!—must have cost L100 a piece at least. No doubt the cows were equally good stuff. And he had noticed under the outer cart-shed a brand-new reaper and binder, and other farm implements and machines of the best quality. Rachel was doing the thing in style.

But where was the farm-house? Then as he crept round the third side of the rough quadrangle, he became aware of a large window with white curtains. Looking through it with his face against the glass, he was startled to find that he was looking straight into the farm-yard through another window of equal size on the other side of the room. And at the moment Halsey came out of the cow-shed carrying a pail of milk in either hand. Delane drew hastily back into the shelter of an old holly that grew against the wall, till the old man had disappeared. Then he eagerly examined the room, which was still suffused by the sunset. Its prettiness and comfort were so many fresh exasperations. He contrasted it inwardly with the wretched lodging from which he had just come. Why, he knew the photographs on the walls—her father, the old parson, and her puritanical mother, whom Rachel had always thrown in his teeth. Her eldest brother, too, who had been drowned at sea. And that engraving—that sentimental thing by Watts, "Love and Death," that Rachel had bought once on a visit to Toronto, and he had scolded her for buying. There it was, as large as life. How did it come there? Was it her property or his? He believed he could claim it, if he chose. Gad!—what would she say if she knew where he was at that moment, and what he was doing!

For eighteen months she had hidden herself so cleverly that he had entirely lost sight of her. When her lawyers communicated with him in the spring they had been careful to give no address. On the whole he had believed her to be still in Canada. She, on the other hand, unless she were a greater fool than he thought her, must have guessed that he would get back to England somehow. Why, the farm had ended in bankruptcy, and what else was there to do but to come home and dun his relations! Yet she had not been afraid to come home herself, and set up in this conspicuous way. She supposed, of course, that she had done with him for good—kicked him off like an old shoe! The rage in his blood set his heart beating to suffocation. Then his cough seized him again. He stifled it as best he could, flattened against the wall, in the shadow of a yew-tree.

The sound, however, was apparently heard, for there were rapid steps across the farm-yard, and a gate opened. "Hallo—who's there?" The voice was, no doubt, that of the labourer he had seen. Delane slipped noiselessly along the wall, and to the back of the stables, till all was quiet again within the farm.

But outside in the road there were persons approaching. He mounted the hill a little way into the shelter of the trees which covered the steep face of the down, and ran up into the great woods along the crest. Through the gathering dusk he saw the large farm-cart clattering up the lane with several figures in it. The cart carried lamps, which sent shafts of light over the stubbles. There was a sound of talk and laughter, and alongside the cart he saw a man leading a motor-bicycle, and apparently talking to the women in the cart. A man in uniform. The American, no doubt!

The cart drew up at the farm-yard gates, and the old labourer came to open them. Everybody dismounted, except one of the girls, who, standing in the wagon, drove the horses. Then, for a time, Delane could see nothing more. The farm quadrangle had absorbed the party. Occasionally a light flashed, or a voice could be heard calling, or laughter came floating up the hill through an open door or window. But in a little while all was silence.

Delane sat down on a fallen trunk, and watched. All kinds of images were rushing through his brain—wide wheat fields with a blazing sun on the stooks—a small frame house set nakedly on the flat prairie with a bit of untidy garden round it—its living room in winter, with a huge fire, and a woman moving about—the creek behind it, and himself taking horses down to water. They were images of something that had once meant happiness and hope—a temporary break or interlude in a dismal tale which had closed upon it before and after.

Darkness came down. The man on the hill said to himself, "Now they are having supper," and he crept down again to the farm, and crouching and wriggling along he made his way again to the big window, over which the curtains had been drawn. There was no one in the sitting-room, however, to judge from the silence, but from the kitchen across the passage came a rush of voices, together with a clatter of plates. The kitchen looked out on the front of the farm, and a wooden shutter had been fastened across the window. But the wood of the shutter was old and full of chinks, and Delane, pressing his face to the window, was able to get just a glimpse of the scene within—Rachel at the head of the table, the man in uniform beside her—three other women. A paraffin lamp threw the shadow of the persons at the table sharply on the white distempered wall. There were flowers on the table, and the meal wore a home-like and tempting air to the crouching spy outside. Rachel smiled incessantly, and it seemed to Delane that the handsome man beside her could not take his eyes from her. Nor could Delane. Her brown head and white throat, her soft, rose-tinted face emerging from the black dress, were youth itself—a vision of youth and lusty-hood brilliantly painted on the white wall.

Delane looked his fill. Then he dropped down the bank on which the farm stood, and avoiding the open track through the fields, he skirted a hedge which led down to the road, and was lost in the shadows of advancing night.



VI

Rain!—how it pelted the September fields day after day and week after week, as though to remind a world still steeped in, still drunk with the most wonderful of harvests, that the gods had not yet forgotten their old jealousy of men, and men's prosperity. Whenever a fine day came the early ploughing and seeding was in full swing, and Rachel on one side of the largest field could watch the drill at work, and on the other the harrow which covered in the seed. In the next field, perhaps, she would find Betty and Jenny lifting potatoes, and would go to help with them, digging and sorting, till every limb ached and she seemed to be a part herself of the damp brown earth that she was robbing of its treasure. For a time when the harvest was done, when the ricks were thatched ready for threshing, there had been a moment of ease. But with the coming of October, the pressure began again. The thought of the coming frost and of all those greedy mouths of cattle, sheep, and horses to be filled through the winter, drove and hunted the workers on Great End Farm, as they have driven and hunted the children of earth since tilling and stock-keeping began. Under the hedges near the house, the long potato caves had been filled and covered in; the sheep were in the turnips, and every two or three days, often under torrents of rain, Rachel and the two girls must change the hurdles, and put the hungry, pushing creatures on to fresh ground. On the top of the down, there was fern to be cut and carted for the winter fodder, and fallen wood to be gathered for fuel, under the daily threats of the coal-controller.

Rachel worked hard and long. How she loved the life that once under other skies and other conditions she had loathed! Ownership and command had given her a new dignity, in a sense a new beauty. Her labourers and her land girls admired and obeyed her, while—perhaps!—Janet Leighton had their hearts. Rachel's real self seemed to be something that no one knew; her companions were never quite at ease with her; and yet her gay, careless ways, the humanity and natural fairness of her mind, carried a spell that made her rule sit light upon them.

Yes!—after all these weeks together, not even Janet knew her much better. The sense of mystery remained; although the progress of the relation between her and Ellesborough was becoming very evident, not only indeed to Janet, but to everybody at the farm. His departure for France had been delayed owing to the death in action of the officer who was to have been sent home to replace him. It might be a month now before he left. Meanwhile, every Sunday he spent some hours at the farm, and generally on a couple of evenings in the week he would arrive just after supper, help to put the animals to bed, and then stay talking with Rachel in the sitting-room, while Janet tidied up in the kitchen. Janet, the warm-hearted, had become much attached to him. He had been at no pains to hide the state of his feelings from her. Indeed, though he had said nothing explicit, his whole attitude to Rachel's friend and partner was now one of tacit appeal for sympathy. And she was more than ready to give it. Her uprightness, and the touch of austerity in her, reached out to similar qualities in him; and the intellectual dissent which she derived from her East Anglican forbears, from the circles which in eighteenth-century Norwich gathered round Mrs. Opie, the Martineaus, and the Aldersons, took kindly to the same forces in him; forces descended from that New England Puritanism which produced half the great men—and women—of an earlier America. Rachel laughed at them for 'talking theology,' not suspecting that as the weeks went on they talked—whenever they got a chance—less and less of theology, and more and more of herself, through the many ingenious approaches that a lover invents and the amused and sympathetic friend abets.

For clearly Ellesborough was in love. Janet read the signs of it in the ease with which he had accepted the postponement of his release from the camp, eager as he was to get to the fighting line. She heard it in his voice, saw it in his eyes; and she was well aware that Rachel saw it. What Rachel thought and felt was more obscure. She watched for Ellesborough; she put on her best frocks for him; she was delighted to laugh and talk with him. But she watched for Mr. Shenstone, too, and would say something caustic or impatient if he were two or three days without calling. And when he called, Rachel very seldom snubbed him, as at first. She was all smiles; the best frocks came out for him, too; and Janet, seeing the growing beatitude of the poor vicar, and the growing nervousness of his sister, was often inclined to be really angry with Rachel. But they were not yet on such terms as would allow her to remonstrate with what seemed to her a rather unkind bit of flirtation; seeing that she did not believe that Rachel had, or ever would have, a serious thought to give the shallow, kindly little man.

But though she held her tongue, Janet showed her feeling sometimes by a tone, or a lifted eyebrow, and then Rachel would look at her askance, turning the vicar's head none the less on the next occasion. Was it that she was deceiving herself, as well as trying, very unsuccessfully, to deceive the lookers-on? The progress of the affair with Ellesborough made on Janet a curious and rather sinister impression, which she could hardly explain to herself. She seemed to see that Ellesborough's suit steadily advanced; that Rachel made no real attempt to resist his power over her. But all the same there was no happy, spontaneous growth in it. Rachel seemed to take her increasing subjection hardly, to be fighting obscurely against it all the time, as though she were hampered by thought and motives unknown to the other two. Ellesborough, Janet thought, was often puzzled by the cynical or bitter talk with which Rachel would sometimes deliberately provoke him. And yet it was clear that he possessed the self-confidence of a strong man, and did not really doubt his ultimate power to win and hold the woman he was courting.

One bitterly cold evening at the very end of September, Ellesborough, arriving at the farm, was welcomed by Janet, and told that all hands were in the fields "clamping" potatoes. She herself left a vegetable stew ready for supper, safely simmering in a hay-box, and walked towards the potato field with Ellesborough. On the way they fell in with Hastings, the bailiff, who was walking fast, and seemed to be in some excitement.

"Miss Leighton—that old fool Halsey has given notice!"

Janet stopped in dismay. Halsey was a valuable man, an old-fashioned labourer of many aptitudes, equally good as a woodman, as an expert in "fagging" or sickling beaten-down corn, as a thatcher of roofs or ricks, as a setter of traps for moles, or snares for rabbits. Halsey was the key-stone of the farm labour. Betts was well enough. But without Halsey's intelligence to keep him straight—Janet groaned.

"What on earth's the matter, Hastings? We raised his wages last week—and we did it before the county award was out!"

Hastings shook his head.

"It's not wages. He says he's seen the ghost!"

Janet exclaimed, and Ellesborough laughed.

"What, the defunct gamekeeper?"

Hastings nodded.

"Vows he's seen him twice—once on the hill—on the green path—and once disappearing round the corner of the farm. He declares that he called to the man—who was like nobody he had ever seen before—and the man took no notice, but went along, all hunched up—as they say the ghost is—and talking to himself—till all of a sudden he vanished. I've argued with him. But nothing'll hold him—old idiot! He vows he'll go—-and if he talks to the others they'll all go."

"Has he gone home?" asked Janet.

"Long ago. He left the horses to Jenny, and just marched off. In the lane he met me, and gave notice. Such a cock-and-bull story as you never heard! But I couldn't do anything with him."

"I'll go and tackle him," said Janet at once. "We can't lose him. The work will go to smash."

She waved a farewell to Ellesborough, and ran back to the house. The others, watching, saw her emerge on her bicycle and disappear towards the village.

"Well, if anybody can move the old fellow, I suppose it's Miss Leighton," said Hastings disconsolately. "She's always managed to get the right side of him so far. But I'm nearly beat, captain! Things are getting too hard for me. You can't say a word to these men—they're off in a moment. And the wages!—it's sinful!"

"We're supposed only to be fighting a war, Hastings," said Ellesborough with a smile as they walked on together. "But all the time there's revolution going on beside it—all over the world!"

Hastings made a face.

"Right you are, captain. And how's it going to work out?"

"Don't ask me!" laughed Ellesborough—"we've all got to sit tight and hope for the best. All I know is that the people who work with their hands are going to get a bit of their own back from the people who work with their heads—or their cheque-books. And I'm glad of it! But ghosts are a silly nuisance. However, I dare say Miss Leighton will get round the old man."

Hastings looked doubtful.

"I don't know. All the talk about the murder has come up again. They say there's a grandson come home of the man that was suspected sixty years ago—John Dempsey. And some people tell me that this lad had the whole story of the murder from his grandfather—who confessed it—only last year, when the man died."

"Well, if he's dead all right, and has owned up to it, why on earth does the ghost make a fuss?"

Hastings shook his head.

"People get talking," he said gloomily. "And when they get talking, they'll believe anything—and see anything. It'll be the girls next."

Ellesborough tried to cheer him, but without much success. The "poor spirit" of the bailiff was a perpetual astonishment to the American, in the prime of his own life and vigour. Existence for Hastings was always either drab or a black business. If the weather was warm, "a bit of cold would ha' been better": if a man recovered from an illness, he'd still got the "bother o' dyin' before him." He was certain we should lose the war, and the rush of the September victories did not affect him. And if we didn't lose it, no matter—prices and wages would still be enough to ruin us. Rachel grew impatient under the constant drench of pessimism. Janet remembered that the man was a delicate man, nearing the sixties, with, as she suspected, but small provision laid up for old age; with an ailing wife; and bearing the marks in body and spirit of years of overwork. She never missed an opportunity of doing him a kindness; and the consequence was that Hastings, always faithful, even to his worst employers, was passionately faithful to his new mistresses, defending them and fighting for their interests, as they were sometimes hardly inclined to fight for themselves.

After showing Ellesborough the way to the "clamps," Hastings left him. In succession to the long days of rain there had been a sudden clearing in the skies. The day had been fine, and now, towards sunset, there was a grand massing of rosy cloud along the edge of the down, and windy lights over the valley. Rachel, busy with the covering of the potato "clamps," laid down the bundle of bracken she had been handing to Peter Betts, and came quickly to meet her visitor. Her working dress was splashed with mire from neck to foot, and coils of brown hair had escaped from her waterproof cap, and hung about her brilliant cheeks. She looked happy, but tired.

"Such a day!" she said, panting, as they met. "The girls and I began at six this morning—lifting and sorting. It was so important to get them in. Now they're safe if the frost does come. It's a jolly crop!"

Ellesborough looked at her, and her eyes wavered before the ardour in his.

"I say! You work too hard! Haven't you done enough? Come and rest."

She nodded. "I'll come!"

She ran to say a word to the others and rejoined him.

They went back to the farm, not talking much, but conscious through every nerve of the other's nearness. Rachel ran upstairs to change her dress, and Ellesborough put the fire together, and shut the windows. For the sun had sunk behind the hill, and a bitter wind was rising. When Rachel came down again, the wood-fire glowed and crackled, the curtains drawn, and she stared in astonishment at a small tea-tray beside the fire.

Ellesborough hurriedly apologized.

"I found some boiling water in the kettle, and I know by now where Miss Janet keeps her tea."

"Janet brought us tea to the field."

"I dare say she did. That was four—this is six. You felt cold just now. You looked cold. Be good, and take it easy!" He pointed to the only comfortable chair, which he had drawn up to the fire.

"Are you sure it boiled?" she said sceptically, as she sank into her chair, her eyes dancing. "No man knows when a kettle boils."

"Try it! For five winters on the Saguenay, I made my own tea—and baked my own bread. Men are better cooks than women when they give their minds to it!" He brought her the cup, hot and fragrant, and she sipped it in pure content while he stood smiling above her, leaning against the mantelpiece.

"I wanted to see you," he said presently. "I've just got my marching orders. Let's see. This is October. I shall have just a month. They've found another man to take over this job, but he can't come till November."

"And—peace?" said Rachel, looking up.

For Prince Max of Baden had just made his famous peace offer of October 5th, and even in rural Brookshire there was a thrilling sense of opening skies, of some loosening of those iron bonds in which the world had lain for four years.

"There will be no peace!" said Ellesborough with sudden energy, "so long as there is a single German soldier left in Belgium or France!"

She saw him stiffen from head to foot—and thrilled to the flame of avenging will that suddenly possessed him. The male looked out upon her, kindling—by the old, old law—the woman in her.

"And if they don't accept that?"

"Then the war will go on," he said briefly, "and I shall be in for the last lap!"

His colour changed a little. She put down her cup and bent over the fire, warming her hands.

"If it does go on, it will be fiercer than ever."

"Very likely. If our fellows set the pace there'll be no dawdling. America's white hot."

"And you'll be in it?"

"I hope so," he said quietly.

There was a pause. Then he, looking down upon her, felt a sudden and passionate joy invade him—joy which was also longing—longing irresistible. His mind had been wrestling with many scruples and difficulties during the preceding days. Ought he to speak—on the eve of departure—or not? Would she accept him? Or was all her manner and attitude towards him merely the result of the new freedom of women? Gradually but surely his mounting passion had idealized her. Not only her personal ways and looks had become delightful to him, but the honourable, independent self in him had come to feel a deep admiration for and sympathy with her honourable independence, for these new powers in women that made them so strong in spite of their weakness. She had become to him not only a woman but a heroine. His whole heart approved and admired her when he saw her so active, so competent, so human. And none the less the man's natural instinct hungered to take her in his arms, to work for her, to put her back in the shelter of love and home—ith her children at her knee....

And how domestic was this little scene in which they stood—the firelight, the curtained room, the tea-things, her soft, bending form, with the signs of labour put away!...

The tears rushed to his eyes. He bent over her, and spoke her name, almost unconsciously.

"Rachel!"

His soul was in the name!

She started, and looked up. While he had been thinking only of her, her thoughts had gone wandering—far away. And they seemed to have brought back—not the happy yielding of a woman to her lover—but distress and fear. A shock ran through him.

"Rachel!—" He held out his hands to her. He could not find words, but his eyes spoke, and the agitation in every feature.

But she drew back.

"Don't—don't say anything—till—"

His look held her—the surprise in it—the tender appeal. She could not take hers from it. But the disturbance in him deepened. For in the face she raised to him there was no flood of maidenly joy. Suddenly—her eyes were those of a culprit examining her judge. A cry sprang to his lips.

"Wait!—wait!" she said piteously.

She fell back in her chair, covering her face, her breast heaving. He saw that she was trying to command herself, to steady her voice. One of those forebodings which are the children of our half-conscious observation shot through him. But he would not admit it.

He stooped over her and tried again to take her hand. But she drew it away, and sat up in her chair. She was very white, and there were tears in her eyes.

"I've got something to say to you," she said, with evident difficulty, "which—I'm afraid—will surprise you very much. Of course I ought to have told you—long ago. But I'm a coward, and—and—it was all so horrible. I am not what you suppose me. I'm—a married woman—at least I was. I divorced my husband—eighteen months ago. I'm quite free now. I thought if you really cared about me—I should of course have to tell you some time—but I've been letting it go on. It was very wrong of me—I know it was very wrong!"

And bowing her face on her knees, she burst into a passion of weeping, the weeping of a child who was yet a woman. The mingled immaturity and intensity of her nature found its expression in the very abandonment of her tears.

Ellesborough, too, had turned pale. He was astounded by what she said. His thoughts rushed back over the six weeks of their friendship—recalling his first impressions of something mysterious and unexplained.

But of late, he had entirely forgotten them. She had talked so frankly and simply of her father and mother—of her father's missionary work in Canada, and her early journeys with him; and of her brother in Ontario, his children and his letters. Once she had handed him a letter from this brother to read, and he had been struck by the refined and affectionate tone of it. Here were the same family relations as his own. His heart, his taste were satisfied. If Rachel Henderson accepted him he would be bringing his mother a daughter she would find it easy to love.

And all the time—instead of an unmarried girl, with the experiences of love and marriage before her—she had been already married—and divorced! Another man had loved and possessed her—and even if she were innocent—but of course she was innocent!—there must be some ugly story involved.

He tried to collect his thoughts—but all his consciousness seemed to be bruised and in pain. He could only put his hand on her hair, and say incoherent things,—

"Don't cry so, dear—don't cry!"

And even as he spoke he felt with bewilderment how—in a moment—their respective attitudes had changed. She checked her sobs.

"Sit there!" she said, pointing peremptorily to a seat opposite. Then she looked round her.

"Where is Janet?"

"She went to the village."

Rachel dried her eyes, and with trembling hands smoothed her hair back from her face.

"I'll try and tell it shortly. It's a horrible tale."

"Do you feel able to tell it?"

For he was aghast at her pallor—the alteration in her whole aspect.

"I must," she wailed. "Weren't you—weren't you just going to ask me to marry you?"

Strange question!—strange frowning eyes!

"I was," he said gravely. "Didn't you know I should?"

"No, no, I didn't know!" she said piteously. "I was never sure—till you looked at me then. I wouldn't be sure!"

He said nothing. Speech was ice-bound till he had heard what she had to say.

"It all began to happen three years ago," she said hurriedly, hiding her face from him with her hand while she hung over the fire. "I was living with my brother, who was then near Winnipeg. He offered me a home after my father died. But he was married, and I didn't get on with his wife. I dare say it was my fault, but I wasn't happy, and I wanted to get away. Then a man—an Englishman—bought the next section to us, and we began to know him. He was a gentleman—he'd been to Cambridge—his father had some land and a house in Lincolnshire. But he was the third son, and he'd been taught land agency, he said, as a training for the colonies. That was all we knew. He was very good-looking, and he began courting me. I suppose I was proud of his being a University man—a public school boy, and all that. He told me a lot of stories about his people, and his money—most of which were lies. But I was a fool—and I believed them. My brother tried to stop it. Well, you know from his letters what sort of man he is," and again she brushed the sudden tears away. "But his wife made mischief, and I was set on having a place of my own. So I stuck to it—and married him."

She rose abruptly from her seat and began to move restlessly about the room, taking up a book or her knitting from the table, and putting them down again, evidently unconscious of what she was doing. Ellesborough waited. His lean, sharply-cut face revealed a miserable, perhaps an agonized suspense. This crisis into which she had plunged him so suddenly was bringing home to him all that he had at stake. That she mattered to him so vitally he had never known till this moment.

"What's the good of going into it!" she said at last desperately. "You can guess—what it means"—a sudden crimson rushed to her cheeks—"to be tied to a man—without honour—or principle—or refinement—who presently seemed to me vile all through—in what he said—or what he did. And I was at his mercy. I had married him in such a hurry he had a right to despise me, and he used it! And when I resisted and turned against him, then I found out what his temper meant." She raised her shoulders with a gesture which needed no words. "Well—we got on somehow till my little girl was born—"

Ellesborough started. Rachel turned on him her sad, swimming eyes. But the mere mention of her child had given her back her dignity and strength to go on. She became visibly more composed, as she stood opposite to him, her beautiful dark head against the sunset clouds outside.

"She only lived a few weeks. Her death was largely owing to him. But that's a long story. And after her death I couldn't stand it any more. I ran away. And soon I heard that he had taken up with an Italian girl. There was a large camp of Italians on the C.P.R., quite close to us. She was the daughter of one of the foremen. So then my brother made me go to his lawyers in Winnipeg. We collected evidence very easily. I got my divorce eighteen months ago. The decree was made absolute last February. So, of course, I'm quite free—quite—quite free!"

She spoke the last words almost savagely, and after them she moved away to the window looking on the down, and stood gazing through it, as though she had forgotten Ellesborough's presence.

"The action was not defended?" he asked, in a low voice.

She shook her head without speaking. But after a minute she added,—

"I can show you the report."

There was silence. Ellesborough turned round, put his hands on the mantelpiece, and buried his face on them. Presently she approached him, looked at him with a quivering lip, and said in broken sentences,—

"It has all come so suddenly—hasn't it? I had been in such good spirits to-day, not thinking of those horrible things at all. I don't know what I meant to do, if you did ask me—for of course I knew you might. I suppose I intended to put off telling you—so as to be sure first—certain—that you loved me. And then—somehow—when you looked down on me like that, I felt—that I cared—much more than I had thought I cared—too much to let you speak—before you knew—before I'd told you. It's always been my way—to—put off disagreeable things. And so I thought I could put this off. But every night I have been awake thinking—'if only he knew!'—and I was wretched—for a while—because you didn't know. But then it went away again—and I forgot it. One does forget things—everything—when one is hard at work. But I'm awfully sorry. And now—I think—we'd better say good-bye."

Her voice faltered against her will. He raised himself quickly.

"No—no," he said passionately, "we won't say good-bye. But you must let me think—for you, as well as for myself."

"It would be better to say good-bye," she persisted. "I'm afraid—you expect in me—what I haven't got. I see that now. Because I'm keen about this work, and I can run this farm, you think—perhaps—I'm a strong character. But I'm not. I've no judgment—not in moral things. I give in—I'm weak—and then—I could kill myself!"

She had grown very white again—and her eyes were strangely fixed on him. The words seemed to him incoherent, out of touch somehow even with their tragic conversation. But his first passing bewilderment was lost in pity and passion. He stopped, took her hand, and kissed it. He came nearer.

But again she drew back.

"There's Janet!" she said, "we can't talk any more."

For she had caught sight of Janet in the farm-yard, leading her bicycle.

"Can you meet me to-morrow evening—on the Common?" he said. "I could be there about six."

She frowned a little.

"Is it worth while?"

"I beg you!" he said huskily.

"Very well—I'll come. We shall be just friends, please."

"But, of course, I'll tell you more—if you wish."

Janet's voice and step were heard in the passage. How Ellesborough got through the next ten minutes he never remembered. When they were over, he found himself rushing through the cool and silence of the autumn night, thankful for this sheltering nature in which to hide his trouble, his deep, deep distress.



VII

The October night rang stormily round Great End Farm. The northwest wind rushing over the miniature pass just beyond the farm, where the road dropped from the level of the upland in which Ipscombe lay, to the level of the plain, was blowing fiercely on the square of buildings which stood naked and undefended against weather from that quarter of the heaven, while protected by the hills and the woods from the northeast. And mingled with the noisy or wailing gusts came the shrieking from time to time of one of the little brown owls that are now multiplying so fast in the English midlands.

The noise of the storm and the clamour of the owl were not the cause of Rachel's wakefulness; but they tended to make it more feverish and irritable. Every now and then she would throw off the bed-clothes, and sit up with her hands round her knees, a white and rigid figure lit by the solitary candle beside her. Then again she would feel the chill of the autumn night, and crouch down shivering among the bed-clothes, pining for a sleep that would not come. Instead of sleep, she could do nothing but rehearse the scene with Ellesborough again and again. She watched the alterations in his face—she heard the changes in his voice—as she told her story. She was now as sorry for him as for herself! The tears came flooding into her eyes as she thought of him. In her selfish fears of his anger she had forgotten his suffering. But the first true love of her life was bringing understanding. She realized the shock to him, and wept over it. She saw, too, that she had been unjust and cowardly in letting the situation go so far without speaking; and that there was no real excuse for her.

Would he give her up? She had told him that all was at an end between them; but that was only pride—making a virtue of a necessity. Oh, no, no, he must not give her up! It was only six weeks since their first meeting, and though it would be untrue to say that since the meeting he had wholly possessed her thoughts, she had been capable all through them of that sort of dallying with the vicar which Janet thought unkind. She had been able to find plenty of mind for her work, and for the ambitions of her new profession, and had spent many a careless hour steeped in the sheer physical pleasure of the harvest. Yet, from the beginning, his personality had laid its grip on hers. She had never been able to forget him for long. One visit from him was no sooner over than she was calculating on and dreaming of the next. And as the consciousness of some new birth in her had grown, and sudden glimpses had come to her of some supreme joy, possibly within her grasp, so fear had grown, and anxiety. She looked back upon her past, and knew it stained—knew that it must at some point rise as an obstacle between her and him.

But how great an obstacle? She was going to tell him, faithfully, frankly, all the story of her marriage—accuse her own rash self-will in marrying Delane, confess her own failings as a wife; she would tell no hypocritical tale. She would make it plain that Roger had found in her no mere suffering saint, and that probably her intolerance and impatience had contributed to send him to damnation. But, after all, when it was told, what could Ellesborough do but pity her?—take her in his arms—and comfort her—for those awful years—and her lost child?

The tears rained down her cheeks. He loved her! She was certain of that. When he had once heard the story, he could not forsake her! She already saw the pity in his deep grey eyes; she already felt his honest, protecting arms about her.

Ah—but then? Beyond that imagined scene, which rose, as though it were staged, before her, Rachel's shrinking eyes, in the windy darkness, seemed to be penetrating to another—a phantom scene in a dim distance—drawn not from the future, but the past. Two figures moved in it. One was herself. The other was not Roger Delane.

The brown owl seemed to be shrieking just outside her window. Her nerves quivered under the sound as though it were her own voice. Why was life so cruel, so miserable? Why cannot even the gods themselves make undone what is done? She was none the worse—permanently—for what had happened in that distant scene—that play within a play? How was she the worse? She was "not a bad woman!"—as she had said so passionately to Janet, when they joined hands. There was no lasting taint left in mind and soul—nothing to prevent her being a pure and faithful wife to George Ellesborough, and a good mother to his children. It was another Rachel to whom all that had happened, a Rachel she had a right to forget! She was weak in will—she had confessed it. But George Ellesborough was strong. Leaning on him, and on kind Janet, she could be all, she would be all, that he still dreamed. The past—that past—was dead. It had no existence. Nothing—neither honour nor love—obliged her to disclose it. Except in her own mind it was dead and buried—as though it had never been. No human being shared her knowledge of it, or ever would.

And yet the Accuser came closer and closer, wrestling with her shrinking heart. "You can't live a lie beside him all your life!" "It won't be a lie. All that matters to him is what I am now—not what I was. And it wasn't I!—it was another woman—a miserable, battered creature who couldn't help herself." "It will rise up between you, and perhaps—after all—in some way—he will discover it." "How can he? Dick and I—who in all the world knew, but us two?—and Dick is dead." "Are you sure that no one knew:—that no one saw you? Think!"

A pale face grew paler in the dim light, as thought hesitated:—

"There was that wagon—and the boy—in the storm." "Yes—what then?" "Well—what then? The boy scarcely saw me." "He did see you." "And if he did—it is the commonest thing in a Canadian winter to be caught by a storm, to ask shelter from a neighbour." "Still—even if he drew no malicious conclusion, he saw you—alone in that farm with Dick Tanner, and he probably knew your name." "How should he know my name?" "He had seen you before—you had seen him before." "I didn't know his name—I don't know it now." "No—but in passing your farm once, he had dropped a parcel for a neighbour—and you had seen him once—at a railway station." "Is it the least likely that I shall ever see him again—or that he remembers seeing me at Dick Tanner's door?" "Not likely, perhaps—but possible—quite possible."

And while this question and answer passed through the brain, the woman sitting up in bed seemed to be transported to a howling wintry scene of whirling snow—a November twilight—and against that background, the hood of a covered wagon, a boy holding the reins, the heavy cape on his shoulders white with snow, the lamps of the wagon shining dimly on him, and making a kind of luminous mist round the cart. She heard a parley, saw a tall and slender man with fair hair go out to the boy with hot milk and bread, caught directions as to the road, and saw herself as a half-hidden figure in the partially open door.

And then afterwards—the warm farm kitchen shutting out the storm—a man at her knees—his arms round her—his kisses on her cheek.

And again the irrevocableness of it closed down upon her. It could never be undone: that was the terrible commonplace which held her in its grasp. It could never be wiped out from one human mind, which must bear the burden of it as best it could, till gradually—steadily—the life, had been killed out of the ugly, haunting thing, and it had been buried—drowned, out of sight and memory.

But the piteous dialogue began again.

"How could I have resisted? I was so miserable—so lonely—so weak!" "You didn't love him!" "No—but I was alone in the world." "Well, then, tell George Ellesborough—he is a reasonable man—he would understand." "I can't—I can't! I have deceived him up till now by passing as unmarried. If I confess this, too, there will be no chance for me. He'll never trust me in anything!—he'll suspect everything I do or say—even if he goes on loving me. And I couldn't bear it!—nor could he."

And so at last the inward debate wore itself out, and sleep, sudden and deep, came down upon Rachel Henderson. When she woke in the morning it was to cleared skies both in her own mind and in the physical world. The nightmare through which she had passed seemed to her now unreal, even a little absurd. Her nerves were quieted by sleep, and she saw plainly what she had to do. That "old, unhappy, far-off thing" lurking in the innermost depth of memory had nothing more to do with her. She would look it calmly in the face, and put it finally—for ever—away. But of her marriage she would tell everything—everything!—to George Ellesborough, and he should deal with her as he pleased.