"It shall be the same! Or rather, we shall owe you a double share of love to make up to you—for that horrible time. Forget it, dear—make yourself forget it. My mother would tell you so at once."

"Isn't she—very strict about divorce?"

Ellesborough hesitated—just a moment.

"She couldn't have any doubts about your case—dearest—who could? You fell among thieves, and—"

"And you're picking me up, and taking me to the inn?"

He pressed her hand passionately. They walked in silence till the gate appeared.

"Go back, dearest. I shall be over on Sunday."

"Not till then?"

"I'm afraid not. If the peace news comes tomorrow, the camp'll go mad, and I shall have to look after them."

They paused at the gate, and he kissed her. She lay passive in his arms, the moonlight touched her brown hair, and the beautiful curves of her cheek and throat.

"Wasn't it heavenly to-day?" she whispered.

"Heavenly! Go home!"

She turned back towards the farm, drawing her cloak and its fur collar close round her, against the cold. And indeed Ellesborough was no sooner gone, the rush of the motor cycle along the distant road had no sooner died away, than a shiver ran through her which was more than physical. So long as he was there, she was happy, excited, hopeful. And when he was not there, the protecting screen had fallen, and she was exposed to all the stress and terror of the storm raging in her own mind.

"Why can't I forget it all—everything! It's dead—it's dead!" she said to herself again and again in an anguish, as she walked back through the broad open field where the winter-sown corn was just springing in the furrows—the moon was so bright that she could see the tiny green spears of it.

And yet in reality she perfectly understood why it was that, instead of forgetting, memory was becoming more and more poignant, more and more persecuting. It was because the searching processes of love were going deeper and deeper into her inmost soul. This good man who loved her, who was going to take her injured life into his keeping, to devote to her all his future, and all the harvest of his upright and hard-working past—she was going to marry him with a lie between them, so that she could never look him straight in the face, never be certain that, sometime or other, something would not emerge like a drowned face from the dark, and ruin all their happiness. It had seemed, at the beginning, so easy to keep silence, to tell everything but the one miserable fact that she couldn't tell! And now it was getting intolerably hard, just because she knew for the first time what love really meant, with its ardour for self-revelation, for an absolute union with the beloved. By marrying him without confession, she would not only be wronging him, she would be laying up probable misery for herself—and him—through the mere action of her own temperament.

For she knew herself. Among the girls and women she had been thrown with during the preceding year and a half, there were some moral anarchists, with whose views she had become strikingly familiar. Why, they said, make so much of these physical facts? Accept them, and the incidents that spring from them. Why all this weeping and wailing over supposed shames and disgraces? The sex-life of the present is making its own new codes. Who knows what they will ultimately be? And as for the indelible traces and effects of an act of weakness or passion that the sentimental and goody-goody people talk of, in the majority of cases they don't exist. After it, the human being concerned may be just the same as before.

Rachel was quite aware of this modern gospel. Only she was shut out from adopting it in her own case by an invincible heredity, by the spirit of her father in her, the saintly old preacher, whose uncompromising faith she had witnessed and shared through all her young years. She might and did protest that the faith was no longer hers. But it had stamped her. She could never be wholly rid of its prejudices and repulsions. What would her father have said to her divorce?—he with his mystical conception of marriage? She dreaded to think. And as to that other fact which weighed on her conscience, she seemed to hear herself pleading—with tears!—"Father!—it wasn't my will—it was my weakness!—Don't look at me so!"

And now, in addition, there was the pressure upon her of Ellesborough's own high ideals and religious temper; of the ideals, also, of his family, as he was tenderly and unconsciously revealing them. And, finally, there was the daily influence of Janet's neighbourhood—Janet, so austere for herself, so pitiful for others: Janet, so like Ellesborough in the unconscious sternness of her moral outlook, so full, besides, of an infinite sorrow for the sinner.

And between these two stood this variable, sensuous, woman's nature, so capable both of good and evil. Rachel felt the burden of their virtues too much for her, together with the sting of her own secret knowledge.

In some moments, even, she rebelled against her own passion. She had such a moment of revolt, in this moonlit dark, as her eyes took in the farm, the dim outlines of the farm buildings, the stacks, the new-ploughed furrows. Two months earlier her life had been absorbed in simple, clear, practical ambitions: how to improve her stock—how to grow another bushel to the acre—how and when to build a silo—whether to try electrification: a score of pleasant riddles that made the hours fly. And now this old fever had crept again into her blood, and everything had lost its savour. There were times when she bitterly, childishly, regretted it. She could almost have hated Ellesborough, because she loved him so well; and because of the terror, the ceaseless preoccupation that her love had begun to impose upon her.

Janet, watching her come in, saw that the radiance had departed, and that she crept about again like a tired woman. When, after nine o'clock, they were alone by the fire, again and again it was on the tip of Janet's tongue to say, "Tell me, who was Dick Tanner?" Then, in a sudden panic fear, lest the words should slip out, and bring something irreparable, she would get up, and make a restless pretence of some household work or other, only to sit down and begin the same inward debate once more. But she said nothing, and Rachel, too, was silent. She sat over the fire, apparently half asleep. Neither of them moved to go to bed till nearly midnight.

Then they kissed each other, and Janet raked out the fire.

"To-morrow!" she said, her eyes on the red glow of the embers, "to-morrow!—Will it be peace?"

And then Rachel remembered that all the civilized world was waiting for the words that would end the war. Somewhere in a French chateau there was a group of men conferring, and on the issue of this night depended the lives of thousands, and the peace of Europe.

Janet raised her clasped hands, and her plain, quiet face shone in the candle-light. She murmured something. Rachel guessed it was a prayer. But her own heart seemed dead and dumb. She could not free it from its load of personal care; she could not feel the patriotic emotion which had suddenly seized on Janet.

The morning broke grey and misty. The two labourers and the girls went about their work—raising their heads now and then to listen. And at eleven came the signal. Out rang the bells from Ipscombe Church tower. Labourers and girls threw down what they were doing, and gathered in the farm-yard round Janet and Rachel, who were waving flags on the steps of the farm-house. Then Rachel gave them all a holiday for the rest of the day, and very soon there was no one left on the farm premises but the two women and the bailiff.

"Don't stay, Hastings," said Rachel. "I'll get the horse and cart myself."

For it was market day at Millsborough, and peace or no peace, she had some business that must be done there.

"Oh, I've no call to go, Miss," said Hastings. "I'd rather stay and look after things."

His eyes met Janet's, and she nodded imperceptibly. She was relieved to think of Hastings—good, faithful, unassuming creature!—remaining on guard. The very desertion of the farm-houses on this great day might tempt marauders—especially that thief or madman who had been haunting their own premises. She hoped the police would not forget them either. But Hastings' offer to stay till the girls came back from the Millsborough crowds and bands at about nine o'clock quite eased her mind. And meanwhile she and Hastings, as had been agreed, kept their anxieties from Rachel.

Rachel went off at twelve o'clock in her khaki suit, driving a spirited young horse in a high cart, which was filled with farm produce. She was to take early dinner with some new friends, and then to go and look at a Jersey cow which Janet coveted, in a farm on the other side of Millsborough.

"Don't wait tea for me," she said to Janet, "I shall get some somewhere." And then with a smile to them both she was off. Janet stood looking after her, lost in a painful uncertainty. "Can't you let it alone?" Lord Melbourne was accustomed to say suavely to those members of the Cabinet who brought him grievances or scandals that wanted seeing to. One half of Janet's mind was saying, "Can't you let it alone?" to the other half.



XI

The daylight had all gone when Rachel at last got into her cart in the yard of the Rose and Thistle at Millsborough and took the reins. But there was a faint moonrise struggling through the mist in which the little town and countryside were shrouded. And in the town, with its laughing and singing crowds, its bright shop windows, its moist, straggling flags, the mist, lying gently over the old houses, the moving people, the flashes and streamers of light, was extraordinarily romantic and beautifying.

Rachel drove slowly through the streets, delighting in the noise and excitement, in the sheer new pleasure of everything, the world—human beings—living—the end of the war. And out among the fields, and in the country road, the November sun was still beautiful; what with the pearly mist, and the purple shapes of the forest-covered hills. She had been much made of in Millsborough. People were anxious to talk to her, to invite her, to do business with her. Her engagement, she perceived, had made her doubly interesting. She was going to be prosperous, to succeed—and all the world smiled upon her.

So that her pulses were running fast as she reached Ipscombe, where, in the mild fog, a few groups were standing about, and a few doors were open. And now—there was home!—in front of her. And—Heavens! what had Janet done? Rachel pulled up the horse, and sat enchanted, looking at the farm. For there it lay, pricked out in light, its old Georgian lines against the background of the hill. Every window had a light in it—every blind was drawn up—it was Janet's illumination for the peace. She had made of the old house "an insubstantial faery place," and Rachel laughed for pleasure.

Then she drove eagerly on into the dark tunnel of trees that lay between her and the house.

Suddenly a shape rushed out of the hedge into the light of the lamps, and a man laid a violent hand upon the horse's reins. The horse reared, and Rachel cried out,—

"What are you doing? Let go!"

But the man held the struggling horse, at once coercing and taming it, with an expert hand. A voice!—that sent a sudden horror through Rachel,—

"Sit where you are—hold tight!—don't be a fool!—he'll quiet down."

She sat paralysed; and, still holding the reins, though the trembling horse was now quiet, a man advanced into the light of the left-hand lamp.

"Well—do you know me?" he said quietly.

She struggled for breath and self-control.

"Let those reins alone!—what are you doing here?"

And snatching up her whip, she bent forward. But he made a spring at it, snatched it easily with a laugh, and broke it.

"You know you never were strong enough to get the better of me. Why do you try? Don't be an idiot. I want to make an appointment with you. You can't escape me. I've watched you for weeks. And see you alone, too. Without that fellow you're engaged to."

Her passion rose, in spite of her deadly fear.

"He'll take care of that," she said, "and the police. I'm not helpless now—as I used to be."

"Ah, but you'd better see me. I've got a great deal to say that concerns you. I suppose you've told that American chap a very pretty story about our divorce? Well, it took me a long time to get to the bottom of it myself. But now I'm—well, disillusioned!"

He came closer, close to the rail of the cart and the lamp, so that she saw clearly the haggard wreck of what once had been Roger Delane, and the evil triumph in his eyes.

"Who stayed the night alone, with Dick Tanner, on his place, when I was safely got rid of?" he said, in a low but clear voice. "And then who played the innocent—who did?"

"Liar!"

"Not at all. I've got some new evidence now—some quite fresh light on the scene—which may be useful to me. I want money. You seem to have a lot. And I want to be paid back a little of what I'm owed. Oh, I can hold my tongue, if it's made worth my while. I don't suppose you've told your American young man anything about Dick Tanner—eh?"

"Let go the horse!" she said fiercely, trying to recapture the reins. "You've nothing to do with me any more."

"Haven't I? Oh, by all means tell your Yankee that I've waylaid you. I shouldn't at all object to an interview with him. In fact, I rather think of asking for it. But if you want to prevent it, you've got to do what you're told."

He came closer, and spoke with slow emphasis. "You've got to arrange a time—when I can see you—alone? When shall it be?"

Silence. But far ahead there were sounds as of some one approaching. Delane leapt on the step of the cart.

"This is Monday. Wednesday night—get rid of everybody! You can do it if you like. I shall come at nine. You've got to let me in."

Her white, quivering face was all his answer.

"Don't forget," he said, jumping down. "Good-night!"

And in a second he was gone, where, she could not tell.

The reins fell from her grasp. She leant back in the cart, half fainting. The horse, finding the reins on his neck, strayed to the grassy side of the road, and began grazing. A short time passed. In another minute or two the left wheel would have gone done into a deep ditch.

"Hallo!" cried a man's voice. "What the matter?"

Rachel tried to rouse herself, but could only murmur inarticulately. The man jumped off his bicycle, propped it against a tree, and came running to her.

He saw a woman, in a khaki felt hat and khaki dress, sitting hunched up in a fainting state on the seat of a light cart. He was just in time to catch the horse and turn it back to the road. Then in his astonishment John Dempsey altogether forgot himself.

"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Delane! Why, you've had a faint. But never mind. Cheer up! I'll get you home safe."

And Rachel, reviving, opened her heavy eyes to see stooping over her the face of the lad in the hooded cart whom she had last seen in the night of that November snowstorm, two years before.

"What did you say?" she asked stupidly. Then, raising herself, with an instinctive gesture she smoothed back her hair from her face, and straightened her hat. "Thank you, I'm all right."

Dempsey's mouth as he retreated from her shaped itself to an involuntary grin.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am—but I think I've seen you in Canada. Didn't I once come to your place, with a parcel from Mr. Grimes—that was my employer—of Redminster? I remember you had a Jap servant. And there was another time, I think"—the lad's eyes fixed her, contracted a little, and sharp with curiosity—"when you and Mr. Dick Tanner gave me that fizzling hot coffee—don't you remember?—in that awful blizzard two years ago? And Mr. Tanner gave the horses a feed, too. Awfully good chap, Mr. Tanner. I don't know what I should have done without that coffee."

Rachel was still deathly white, but she had recovered possession of herself, and her mind was working madly through a score of possibilities.

"You're quite mistaken," she said coldly, "I never saw you before that I am aware of. Please let go the reins. I can manage now quite well. I don't know what made me feel ill. I'm all right now."

"You've got the reins twisted round the shaft, miss," said Dempsey officiously. "You'd better let me put 'em right."

And without waiting for a reply, he began to disentangle them, not without a good deal of fidgeting from the horse, which delayed him. His mouth twitched with laughter as he bent over the shaft. Deny that she was Mrs. Delane! That was a good one. Why, now that he had seen her close, he could swear to her anywhere.

Rachel watched him, her senses sharpening rapidly. Only a few minutes since Roger had been there—and now, this man. Had they met? Was there collusion between them? There must be. How else could Roger know? No one else in the world but this youth could have given him the information. She recalled the utter solitude of the snow-bound farm—the heavy drifts—no human being but Dick and herself—till that evening when the new snow was all hard frozen, and they two had sleighed back under the moon to her own door.

What to do? She seemed to see her course.

"What is your name?" she asked him, endeavouring to speak in her ordinary voice, and bending over the front of the cart, she spoke to the horse, "Quiet, Jack, quiet!"

"My name's John Dempsey, ma'am." He looked up, and then quickly withdrew his eyes. She saw the twitching smile that he now could hardly restrain. By this time he had straightened the reins, which she gathered up.

"It's curious," she said, "but you're not the first person who's mistaken me for that Mrs. Delane. I knew something about her. I don't want to be mistaken for her."

"I see," said Dempsey.

"I would rather you didn't speak about it in the village—or anywhere. You see, one doesn't like to be confused with some people. I didn't like Mrs. Delane."

The lad looked up grinning.

"She got divorced, didn't she?"

"I dare say. I knew very little about her. But, as I said, I don't want to be mistaken for her."

Then, tying the reins to the cart, she jumped down and stood beside him.

His hand went instinctively to the horse's mouth, holding the restive animal still.

"And I should be very much obliged to you if you would keep what you thought about me to yourself. I don't want you to talk about it in the village or anywhere. Come up and see me—at the farm—and I'll tell you why I dislike being mixed up with that woman—why, in fact, I should mind it dreadfully. I can't explain now, but—"

The young man was fairly dazzled by the beauty of the sudden flush on her pale cheeks, of her large pleading eyes, her soft voice. And this—as old Betts had only that afternoon told him—was the lady engaged to his own superior officer, Captain Ellesborough, the Commandant of Ralstone Camp, whom he heartily admired, and stood in considerable awe of! His vanity, of which he possessed so large a share, was much tickled; but, also, his feelings were touched.

"Why, of course, ma'am, won't say anything. I didn't mean any harm."

"All right," said Rachel, scrambling back to her seat. "If you like to come up to-morrow morning, I shall be pleased to see you. It's a bargain, mind!"

He saluted, smiling. She nodded to him, and drove off.

"Well, that's the rummiest go!" said the bewildered Dempsey to himself, as he walked towards his bicycle. "Mistake be damned! She was Mrs. Delane, and what's she up to now with my captain? And what the deuce was she doing at Tanner's?"

Never did a person feel himself more vastly important than Dempsey as he bicycled back to the Ralstone camp, whence he had started in the morning, after the peace news, to go and see a cousin living some distance beyond Great End Farm. To be his grandfather's grandson was much—but this!

Rachel drove, with hands unconscious of the reins, along the road and up the farm lane leading through her own fields. The world swam around her in the mist, but there, still in front of her, lay the illuminated farm, a house of light standing in air. As she neared it, the front door opened and sounds of singing and laughter came out.

The "Marseillaise"! Allons, enfants de la patrie!—Janet was playing it, singing vigorously herself, and trying to teach the two girls the French words, a performance which broke down every other minute in helpless laughter from all three. Meanwhile, Hastings, who had been standing behind the singers, his hands in his pockets, a rare and shamefaced pleasure shining from his care-worn face, thought he heard the cart, and looked out. Yes, it was the Missis, as he liked to call Miss Henderson, and he ran down to meet her.

"Well, I suppose there were fine doings at Millsborough, Miss," he said, as he held the horse for her to get down.

"Yes—there were a lot of people. It was very noisy."

"We thought you'd hear our noise, Miss, as far as the road! Miss Leighton, she's been keeping us all alive. She took the girls to church—to the Thanksgiving Service, while I looked after things."

"All right, Hastings," said Miss Henderson, in a voice that struck his ear strangely. "Thank you. Will you take the cart?"

He thought as he led the horse away, "She's been overdoin' it again. The Cap'n will tell her so."

Rachel climbed the little slope to the front door. It seemed an Alp. Presently she stood on the threshold of the sitting-room, in her thick fur coat, looking at the group round the piano. Janet glanced round, laughing. "Come and join in!" And they all struck up "God Save the King"—a comely group in the lamplight, Jenny and Betty lifting their voices lustily. But they seemed to Rachel to be playing some silly game which she did not understand. She closed the door and went upstairs to her own room. It was cold and dark. She lit a candle, and her own face, transformed, looked at her from the glass on the dressing-table. She gave a weary, half-reflective sigh. "Shall I be like that when I'm old?"

She took off her things, and changed mechanically into an afternoon dress, her mind, like a hunted thing, running hither and thither all the time.

Presently she got up and locked the door. She must think—think—by herself.

It would be quite easy to defy Roger—quite easy to lie, and lie successfully, if only she was sure of herself, and her own will to carry things through. Roger could prove nothing—or that vulgar boy—or anybody. She had only to say, "I went to find Lucy Tanner, who was my friend—she wasn't there—I was overtaken by the storm—and Dick Tanner looked after me till I could get home."

It was the most natural—the most plausible story. If Delane forced himself on George with any vile tale, Ellesborough would probably give him in charge for molesting his former wife. There was absolutely nothing to fear, if she handled the thing in a bold, common-sense way, and told a consistent and clever lie.

And yet, she had weakly made appointments with both her tormentors!—made it plain to them that she was afraid! She called herself a coward, and a fool—and then as she leant her head against the side of her bed, the tears ran down her face, and her heart cried out for Ellesborough.

"How can I go on lying to him—now—and all my life?" It was the same cry as before, but more intense, more passionate with every day's living. The need for lying had now doubled; yet her will could less and less steel itself to it, because of sheer love and remorse towards the man who loved her.

"He would forgive me. I know he would—I know he would!" she kept on murmuring to herself, while her eyes rained in the semi-darkness.

Yes, but it would change everything! Their love—his feeling towards her—could never be the same again. After Roger Delane—Dick Tanner. Why not another—and another? Would he not always be watching her, dreading some new discovery! Suspecting her, even while he loved her?

No. She must choke off Delane—with money—the only way. And invent some story—some bribe, too—for that odious young man who had caught her unawares.

So again she hardened herself, despairingly. It could not be allowed her—the balm and luxury of confession! It was too dangerous. Her all was in it.

Meanwhile, the singing continued below. Janet had struck up "Tipperary," and the small flute-like voices of the girls, supported by her harsher one, mounted joyously through every crevice of the slightly-built house.

"It's a long, long way to Tipperary, And my heart's right there."

The beautiful tune, interwoven for our generation with all that is most poignant in its life, beat on Rachel's nerves. It was being sung all over England that Armistice Day, as it had been sung in the first days of the war, joyously, exultingly, yet with catching breath. There was in it more than thousands of men and women dared to probe, whether of joy or sorrow. They sang it, with a sob in the throat. To Rachel, also, sunk in her own terrors, it was almost unbearable. The pure unspoilt passion of it—the careless, confident joy—seemed to make an outcast of her, as she sat there in the dark, dragged back by the shock and horror of Delane's appearance into the slime and slough of old memories, and struggling with them in vain. Yes, she was "damaged goods"—she was unfit to marry George Ellesborough. But she would marry him! She set her teeth—clinging to him with all the energy of a woman's deepening and maturing consciousness. She had been a weak and self-willed child when she married Delane—when she spent those half miserable, half wild days and nights with Dick Tanner. Now she trusted a good man—now she looked up and adored. Her weakness was safe in the care of George Ellesborough's strength. Well, then, let her fight for her love.

Presently Janet knocked at the door. The singing downstairs had ceased.

"Are you tired, Rachel? Can't I help you?"

"Just a bit tired. I'm resting. I'll be down directly."

* * * * *

But the interruption had started fresh anxieties in her mind. She had paid the most perfunctory attention to the few words Janet had said about Dempsey's call at the farm, two nights before. She understood at the time that he had come to chatter about the murder, and was very glad that she had been out of the way.

But now—what was it that he had said to Janet—and why had Janet said so little about his visit?

Instead of resting she walked incessantly up and down. This uncertainty about Janet teased her; but after all it was nothing to that other mystery—how did Roger know?—and to the strange and bewildering effect of the juxtaposition of the two men—their successive appearance in the darkness within—what?—ten minutes?—a quarter of an hour?—while the cloud was on her own brain—without apparently any connection between them—and relevance to each other. There must have been some connection! And yet there had been no sign of any personal knowledge of Roger Delane in Dempsey's talk; and no reference whatever to Dempsey in Delane's.

She went down to supper, very flushed and on edge. Little Jenny eyed her surreptitiously. For the first time the child's raw innocence was disturbed or jealous. What did John Dempsey want with calling on Miss Henderson—and why had he made a rather teasing mystery of it to her, Jenny? "Wouldn't you like to know, Miss Inquisitive?" Yes, Jenny would like to know. Of course Miss Henderson was engaged to Captain Ellesborough, and all that. But that was no reason why she should carry off Jenny's "friend," as well as her own. Jenny's heart swelled within her as she watched Miss Henderson from the other end of the table. Yes, of course, she was nice-looking, and her clothes were nice. Jenny thought that she would get a new best dress soon, now that peace was come; and a new hat with a high silk crown to match the dress. Dempsey had admired a hat like that on a girl in the village. He had said it was "real smart." And to be "smart" Jenny thought was to be happy.

After supper, Janet and the girls washed up and put all tidy for the night. Rachel worked at accounts in the sitting-room. She had sold the last hay she had to spare wonderfully well, and potatoes showed a good profit. Threshing charges were very high, and wages—appalling! But on the whole, they were doing very well. Janet's Jersey cow had been expensive, but they could afford her.

They had never yet drawn out so good an interim balance sheet without delight, and rosy dreams for the future. Now her mood was leaden, and she pushed the papers aside impatiently. As she was sitting with her hands round her knees, staring into the fire, or at the chair where Ellesborough had sat while she told her story, Janet came into the room. She paused at the door, and Rachel did not see her look of sudden alarm as she perceived Rachel's attitude of depression. Then she came up to the fire. The two girls could be heard laughing overhead.

"So my cow's a good one?" she said, with her pleasant voice and smile.

"A beauty," said Rachel, looking up, and recapitulating the points and yield of the Jersey.

Janet gave a shrug—implying a proper scepticism.

"It doesn't seem to be quite as easy to tell lies about cows as about horses," she said, laughing; "that's about all one can say. We'll hope for the best." Then—after a moment,—

"I never told you much about that man Dempsey's visit. Of course he came to see you. He thought when he saw you at Millsborough that you were a Mrs. Delane he had seen in Canada. Were you perhaps a relation of hers? I said I would ask you. Then I inquired how often he had seen Mrs. Delane. He said twice—perhaps three times—at her home—at a railway station—and at a farm belonging to a man called Tanner."

"Yes," said Rachel, indifferently. "I knew Lucy Tanner, his sister. She was an artist like him. I liked them both."

There was silence. In Rachel's breast there was beating a painful tide of speech that longed to find its way to freedom—but it was gripped and thrust back by her will. There was something in Janet as in Ellesborough that wooed her heart, that seemed to promise help.

But nothing more passed, of importance. Janet, possessed by vague, yet, as they seemed to herself, quite unreasonable anxieties, gave some further scornful account of Dempsey's murder talk, to which Rachel scarcely listened; then she said, as she turned to take up her knitting,—

"I'm going over to-morrow to a little service—a Thanksgiving service—at Millsborough. I took the girls to church to-day—but I love my own people!" Her face glowed a little.

"Unitarian service, you mean?"

"Yes—we've got a little 'cause' there, and a minister. The service will be about six, I think. The girls will manage. The minister and his wife want me to stay to supper—but I shall be back in good time."

"About ten?"

"Oh, yes—quite by then. I shall bicycle."

Through Rachel's mind there passed a thrill of relief. So Janet would be out of the way. One difficulty removed. Now, to get rid of the girls?

* * * * *

Rachel scarcely slept, and the November day broke grey and misty as before. After breakfast she went out into the fields. Old Halsey was mole-catching in one of them. But instead of going to inspect him and his results, she slipped through a tall hedge, and paced the road under its shelter, looking for Dempsey.

On the stroke of eleven she saw him in the distance. He came up with the same look, half embarrassed, half inclining to laugh, that he had worn the day before. Rachel, on the other hand, was entirely at her ease, and the young man felt her at once his intellectual and social superior.

"You seem to have saved me and my horse from a tumble into that ditch last night," she said, with a laugh, as she greeted him. "Why I turned faint like that I can't imagine. I do sometimes when I'm tired. Well, now then—let us walk up the road a little."

With her hands in her pockets she led the way. In her neat serge suit and cap, she was the woman-farmer—prosperous and competent—all over. Dempsey's thoughts threw back in bewilderment to the fainting figure of the night before. He walked on beside her in silence.

"I wanted to tell you," said Miss Henderson calmly—"because I'm sure you're a nice fellow, and don't want to hurt anybody's feelings—why I asked you to hold your tongue about Mrs. Delane. In the first place, you're quite mistaken about myself. I was never at Mr. Tanner's farm—never in that part of Canada; and the person you saw there—Mrs. Delane—was a very favourite cousin of mine, and extraordinarily like me. When we were children everybody talked of the likeness. She had a very sad story, and now—she's dead." The speaker's voice dropped. "I've been confused with her before—and it's a great trouble to me. The confusion has done me harm, more than once, and I'm very sensitive about it. So, as I said last night, I should be greatly obliged if you would not only not spread the story, but deny it, whenever you can."

She looked at him sharply, and he coloured crimson.

"Of course," he stammered, "I should like to do anything you wish."

"I do wish it, and—" she paused a moment, as though to think—"and Captain Ellesborough wishes it. I would not advise you, however, to say anything at all about it to him. But if you do what we ask you, you may be sure we shall find some way—some substantial way—of showing that we appreciate it."

They walked on, she with her eyes on the ground as though she were thinking out some plan for his benefit—he puzzled and speechless.

"What do you want to do, now the war's over?" she said at last, with a smile, looking up.

"I suppose I want to settle down—somewhere—on land, if I had the money."

"Here?—or in Canada?"

"Oh, at home."

"I thought so. Well, Mr. Dempsey, Captain Ellesborough and I shall be quite ready to help you in any scheme you take up. You understand?"

"That's awfully kind of you—but—"

"Quite ready," she repeated. "Let me know what your plans are when you've worked them out—and I'll see what can be done." Then she stopped. There was a gate near into one of her own fields. Their eyes met—hers absolutely cool and smiling—his wavering and excited.

"You understand?" she repeated.

"Oh, yes—I understand."

"And you agree?" she added, emphasizing the words.

"Oh, yes, I—I—agree."

"Well, then, that's all right—that's understood. A letter will always find me here. And now I must get back to my work. Good-morning."

And with a nod, she slipped through the gate, and was half way across the fallow on the other side of it before he had realized that their strange conversation was at an end.



XII

The vicar and his sister Eleanor were sitting at breakfast in the small Georgian house, which, as the vicarage, played a still important part in the village of Ipscombe. The Church may be in a bad way, as her own children declare; revolution may be in sight, as our English Bolshevists love to believe—not too seriously; but meanwhile, if a stranger in any normal English village wants to lay his finger on the central ganglion of its various activities, he will still look for the church and the vicarage—or rectory, as the case may be. If the parson is bad or feeble, the pulse of the village life will show it; and if he is energetic and self-devoted, his position will give him a power in the community—power, tempered of course by the necessary revolts and reactions which keep the currents of life flowing—not to be easily attained by other energetic and self-devoted persons. The parson may still easily make himself a tyrant, but only to find, in the language of the Greek poet, that it was "folly even to wish" to tyrannize.

The vicar had come downstairs that morning in a mood of depression, irritable—almost snappish depression. His sister Eleanor had seldom seen him so unlike himself. Being an affectionate sister, she was sorry for him; though, as she rightly guessed, it was that very news which had brought such great relief of mind to herself which was almost certainly responsible for her brother's gloom. Miss Henderson was engaged to Captain Ellesborough. There was therefore no question of her becoming Mrs. Shenstone, and a weight was lifted from the spirits of the vicar's sister. Towards Rachel, Eleanor Shenstone felt one of those instinctive antipathies of life which are far more decisive than any of the ordinary causes of quarrel. Miss Shenstone was thin, methodical, devoted; of small speech and great virtue. Such persons so securely anchored and self-determined can have but small sympathy for the drifters of this world. And that Rachel Henderson was—at least as compared with herself and her few cherished friends—morally and religiously adrift, Miss Shenstone had decided after half an hour's conversation.

The vicar knew perfectly well that his sister was relieved. It was that which had secretly affected a naturally sweet temper. He was suffering besides from a haunting sense of contrast between these rainy November days, and the glowing harvest weeks in which he had worked like a navvy for and with Rachel Henderson. It was over, of course. None of the nice things of life ever came his way for long. But he did feel rather sorely that during his short spell of favour with her, Miss Henderson had encouraged him a good deal. She had raised him up—only to cast him down. He thought of her smiles, and her sudden softness, of the warm grip of her hand, and the half mocking, half inviting look in her eyes, with the feeling of a child shut out from a garden where he well knows the ripe apples are hanging; only not for him. The atmosphere of sex which environed her—was it not that which had beguiled the vicar, while it had repelled his sister? And yet Eleanor Shenstone did most honestly wish her brother to marry—only not—not anything so tempting, troubling, and absorbing as Rachel Henderson.

"Haven't we a tiresome meeting to-night?" said the vicar with an impatient sigh, as he sat languidly down to the couple of sardines which were all his sister had allowed him for breakfast.

"Yes—Miss Hall is coming to speak."

Miss Hall was a lady who spoke prodigiously on infant welfare, and had a way of producing a great, but merely temporary effect on the mothers of the village. They would listen in a frightened silence while she showed them on a blackboard the terrifying creatures that had their dwelling in milk, and what a fly looks like when it is hideously—and in the mothers' opinion most unnecessarily—magnified. But when she was gone came reaction. "How can she know aught about it—havin' none of her own?" said the village contemptuously. None the less the village ways were yielding, insensibly, little by little; and the Miss Halls were after all building better than they knew.

The vicar, however, always had to take the chair at Miss Hall's meetings, and he was secretly sick and tired of babies, their weights, their foods, their feeding-bottles, and everything concerned with them. His sister considered him and like a wise woman, offered him something sweet to make up for the bitter.

"Do you think you could possibly take a note for me to Miss Leighton this morning—when you go to see old Frant?"

"Old Frant" was a labourer on the point of death to whom the vicar was ministering.

He pricked up his ears.

"Great End's hardly in old Frant's direction."

Camouflage, of course. Miss Shenstone understood perfectly.

"It won't take you far out of your way. I want Miss Leighton to send those two girls to the Armistice dance to-night if they'd like to come. Lady Alicia writes that several of her maids are down with the flu, and she asks me to give away two or three more tickets."

"Why doesn't Lady Alicia let the servants manage the thing themselves when she gives them a party? They ought to invite. I wouldn't be bossed if I were they," said the vicar, with vivacity.

"She's so particular about character, dear."

"So would they be. She hasn't been so very successful in her own case."

For the Shepherds' eldest daughter had just been figuring in a divorce case to the distress of the Shepherds' neighbours.

Miss Shenstone showed patience.

"I'll have the note ready directly."

And when it was ready, the vicar took it like a lamb. He walked first to Great End, meditating as he went on Miss Henderson's engagement. He had foreseen it, of course, since the day of the Millsborough "rally." A fine fellow, no doubt—with the great advantage of khaki. But it was to be hoped we were not going to be altogether overrun with Americans—carrying off English women.

At the gate of the farm stood a cart into which two young calves had just been packed. Hastings was driving it, and Rachel Henderson, who had just adjusted the net over the fidgety frightened creatures, was talking to him.

She greeted Shenstone rather shyly. It was quite true that in the early stages of her acquaintance with Ellesborough she had amused herself a good deal with the vicar. And in his note of congratulation to her on her engagement, she had detected just the slightest touch of reproach.

"I wish I had guessed it sooner." That meant, perhaps—"Why did you make a fool of me?"

Meanwhile Miss Shenstone's note was duly delivered, and Rachel, holding it in her hand, opened the wicket gate.

"Won't you come in?"

"Oh, no, I mustn't waste your time," said the vicar, with dignity. "Perhaps you'll give me a verbal answer."

Rachel opened the note, and the vicar was puzzled by the look which crossed her face as she read it. It was a look of relief—as though something fitted in.

"Very kind of Lady Alicia. Of course the girls shall come. They will be delighted. You really won't come in? Then I'll walk to the road with you."

What was the change in her? The vicar perceived something indefinable; and before they had walked half the distance to the road he had forgotten his own grievance. She looked ill. Janet Leighton, meeting him in the village a few days before, had talked of her partner as "done up." Was it the excitement of falling in love?—combined perhaps with the worry of leaving her work and the career just begun?

He asked a few questions about her plans. She answered him very gently, with a subtle note of apology in her voice; but yet, as it seemed to him, from rather far away. And when they parted, he realized that he had never known more of her than an outer self, which offered but little clue to the self within.

Rachel walked back to the farm with Miss Shenstone's note in her pocket. She had told the vicar that her land-girls should certainly come to the Shepherds' servants' party—but she said nothing about it to them—till Janet Leighton had safely bicycled away in the early afternoon. The invitation, however, was a godsend. For Rachel had begun to realize that there was a good deal of watching going on—watching of the farm, and watching over herself. She understood that Halsey had been scared by some tramp or other whom he took for the ghost; and she saw that Janet was unwilling that any one should be alone after dark in the farm. Nobody had talked to her—Rachel—about it—no doubt by Ellesborough's wish—because she was supposed to be out of sorts—run down. She had accepted the little conspiracy of silence as a proof of his tenderness, and had obediently asked no questions.

And it had not yet occurred to her to connect the stories floating about the farm with Delane's reappearance. The stunning fact of the reappearance, with all that it might mean to her, absorbed her mind—for a few hours yet.

But as soon as Janet was safely off the premises, she hurried across to the shippen, where Betty and Jenny were milking.

"Girls!—would you like to go to the Shepherds' dance to-night? I've got an invitation for you?"

Stupefaction—and delight! The invitations had been very sparing and select, and the two little maidens had felt themselves Cinderellas indeed, all the sorer in their minds seeing that Dempsey and Betty's young man were both going.

But frocks! Jenny at least had nothing suitable. Rachel at once offered a white frock. The milking and dairy work were hurried through, and then came the dressing, as the dance began at seven. Betty, knowing herself to be a beauty, except for her teeth, had soon finished. A white blouse, a blue cotton skirt, a blue ribbon in her mop of brown hair—and she looked at herself exultantly in Miss Henderson's glass. Jenny was much more difficult to please. She was crimson with excitement, and the tip of her little red tongue kept slipping in and out. But Rachel patted and pinned—in a kind of dream. Jenny's red hair, generally worn in the tightest wisps and plaits, was brushed out till it stood like a halo round her face and neck, and she was secretly afraid that Dempsey wouldn't know her.

Then Rachel wrapped them up in their land-army waterproofs, and saw them off, carrying an electric torch to guide them safely through the bit of lane under the trees. But there was a moon rising, and the fog was less.

"Ain't she just kind?—don't you just love her?" said Jenny ecstatically to Betty, as they turned back to wave their farewells again to the figure standing in the doorway.

Betty assented. But they were both greatly astonished. For Rachel did not in general take much personal notice of them.

They were no sooner out of sight than Rachel went to look at the clock in the kitchen. Ten minutes to seven. Two hours to wait. How were they going to be got through?

She went out aimlessly into the farm-yard, where the farm buildings stood in a faintly luminous mist, the hill-side behind them, and the climbing woods. To her left, across the fields ran the road climbing to the miniature pass, whence it descended steeply to the plain beyond. And on the further side of the road lay her own fields, with alternating bands of plough-land and stubble, and the hedge-row trees standing ghostly and separate in the light haze.

She was alone in the farm, in all that landscape the only living thing at the moment, except for the animals. A tense energy of will seemed to possess her. She was defending herself—defending Ellesborough—and their joint lives. How was she going to do it? She didn't know. But the passion in her blood would give her strength—would see her through.

In the old barn, the cows were munching peacefully. The air was sweet with their breath, and with the hay piled in their cribs. Rachel wandered noiselessly amongst them, and they turned their large eyes slowly to look at her, and the small lantern she carried. In the stables, too, not a sound, but an occasional swishing and champing. Rachel hung up the lantern, and sat down on a truss of hay, idly watching the rays of light striking up into the cross-beams of the roof, and on the shining flanks of the horses. Her mind was going at a great speed. And all in a moment—without any clear consciousness of the strange thoughts that had been running through her brain—an intuition struck through her.

Roger!—it was he who had been playing the ghost—he who had been seen haunting the farm—who had scared Halsey—Roger! come to spy upon her and her lover! Once the idea suggested itself, she was certain of it—it must be true.

The appearance in the lane had been cleverly premeditated. She had been watched for days, perhaps for weeks.

Ellesborough had been watched, too, no doubt.

She drew a shuddering breath. She was afraid of Roger Delane. From the early days of her marriage she had been afraid of him. There was about him the incalculable something which means moral insanity—abnormal processes of mind working through uncontrolled will. You could never reason with or influence him, where his appetites or his passions were concerned. A mocking spirit looked out upon you, just before his blow fell. He was a mere force—inhuman and sinister.

Well, she had got to fight it and tame it! She shut up the cow-house and stable, and stood out awhile in the farm-yard, letting the mild wind play on her bare head and hot cheeks. The moon was riding overhead. The night seemed to her very silent and mysterious—yet penetrated by something divine to which she lifted her heart. What would Ellesborough say over there—in his forester's hut, five miles beyond the hills, if he knew what she was doing—whom she was expecting? She shut her eyes, and saw his lean, strong face, his look—

The church clock was striking, and surely—in the distance, the sound of an opening gate? She hurried back to the house, and the sitting-room. The lamp was low. She revived it. She made up the fire. She felt herself shivering with excitement, and she stooped over the fire, warming her hands.

She had purposely left the front door unlocked. A hand tried the handle, turned it—a slow step entered.

She went to the sitting-room door and threw it open—

"Come in here."

Roger Delane came in and shut the door behind him. They confronted each other.

"You've managed it uncommonly well," he said, at last. "You've dared it. Aren't you afraid of me?"

"Not the least. What do you want?"

They surveyed each other—with hatred, yet not without a certain passionate curiosity on both sides. When Delane had last seen Rachel she was a pale and care-worn creature, her youth darkened by suffering and struggle, her eyes still heavy with the tears she had shed for her lost baby. He beheld her now rounded and full-blown, at the zenith of her beauty, and breathing an energy, physical and mental, he had never yet seen in her. She had escaped him, and her life had put out a new flower. He was suddenly possessed as he looked at her, both by the poisonous memory of old desire, and by an intolerable sense of his impotence, and her triumph. And the physical fever in his veins made self-control difficult.

On her side, she saw the ruin of a man. When she married him he had been a moral wreck. But the physical envelope was still intact, still splendid. Now his clothes seemed to hang upon a skeleton; the hollows in the temples and cheeks, the emaciation of the face and neck, the scanty grey hair, struck horror, but it was a horror in which there was not a trace of sympathy or pity. He had destroyed himself, and he would, if he could, destroy her. She read in him the thirst for revenge. She had to baffle it, if she could.

As she defied him, indeed, she saw his hand steal to his coat-pocket, and it occurred to her that the pocket might contain a revolver. But the thought only nerved her—gave her an almost exultant courage.

"What do I want?" he repeated, at last with-drawing his eyes. "I'll tell you. I've come—like Foch—to dictate to you certain terms, which you have only to accept. We had better sit down. It will take time."

Rachel pointed to a chair. He took it, crossed one knee over the other, rested his arm on the table near, and watched her with a sneering smile, while she seated herself.

He broke the silence.

"I confess you were very clever about Dick Tanner—and I was a precious fool! I never suspected."

"I have not the least idea what you mean."

"A lie!" he said, impetuously. "You were in Dick Tanner's house—staying with him alone—at night—after I left you. You were seen there—by a man—a Canadian—from whom I had the story—only two days ago. He doesn't know my name, nor I his. We met on the common, two nights ago, after dark. And by the merest chance he was coming to the farm, and he began to talk of you. Then this came out. But of course I always knew that it—or something like it—would come out. Your puritanical airs never deceived me—for a moment."

"I suppose you are talking of John Dempsey?" The scorn in her voice enraged him.

"I know nothing about John Dempsey. Of course I can track the man who told me, if I want to—with the greatest ease. He was coming here to call. He saw either you or your partner. And I shall track him—if you force me."

She was silent—and he smiled.

"Assume, please, that I have my witness at hand. Well, then, he saw you alone—at night—in Dick Tanner's charge, a few days apparently, after you and I quarrelled. What were you doing there?"

"It was during that great snowstorm, I suppose," she said, in her most ordinary voice, taking up her knitting. "I remember going over to the Tanners' to ask for something—and being snow-bound. Lucy Tanner was always ready to help me—and be sorry for me."

At this he laughed out, and the note of the laugh dismayed her.

"Lucy Tanner? Yes, that's good. I thought you'd play her! Now, I'll tell you something. The day after I left you, I was on the train going to Regina. We stopped a long time. I don't remember why—at Medicine Hat—and walking up and down the platform was—Lucy Tanner! Does that surprise you? She told me she couldn't stand the Manitoba climate, and was going to a friend at Kamloops for the winter. Is that news to you?"

Rachel had turned white, but he saw no other sign of discomposure.

"Not at all. Naturally, I went over expecting to find her. But as you say, she was gone, and Mr. Tanner drove me back, when the storm went down."

Then she threw down her knitting and faced him.

"What's the use of talking like this, Roger? You won't make anything out of this story you're so proud of. Hadn't you better come to business? Why have you been spying on me, and dogging me like this? You know, of course, I could give you in charge to-morrow, or I could get Captain Ellesborough to do it. And I will—unless you give me your solemn promise to leave this place, to go out of my life altogether, and stop molesting me in this scandalous way. Now, of course, I understand who it is that has been prowling about the farm all these weeks. And I warn you the police too know all about it, and are on the watch. They may have tracked you here to-night for all I know."

"Not they! I passed one bobby fellow on the hill, going safely away north, as I came down. I was scarcely three yards from him, and he never twigged. And the other's gone to Millsborough. You could hardly be more alone, more entirely at my mercy—than you are at this moment, Miss Henderson!" He laid an ironic emphasis on the name.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"All the same the people who live with me in this house will soon be back. I recommend you to make haste. I ask you again—what is it you want?"

She had stood up pluckily—he admitted it. But, as he observed her closely it seemed to him that the strain on her nerves was telling. She was beginning to look pinched, and her hand as it lay beside her knitting shook.

"Well, I'll tell you," he said coolly. He took a half sheet of note-paper out of the breast-pocket of his coat, drew the lamp on the table towards him, and looked at certain figures and notes written on the paper.

"I went this morning in town to look up your uncle's will. Of course I remember all about that old chap at Manchester. I often speculated on what he was going to leave you. Unfortunately for me he lived just a little too long. But I find from the copy of the will that he left you—three—thousand—pounds. Not bad, considering that you were never at all civil to him. But three thousand pounds is more than you require to run this small farm on. You owe me damages for the injury you inflicted on me by the loss of—first, your society; second, your financial prospects. I assess it at five hundred pounds. Pay me that small sum, and—well, I engage to leave you henceforth to the Captain,—and your conscience."

He bent forward across the table, his mocking eyes fixed intently upon her. There was silence a moment—till she said:—

"And if I refuse?"

"Oh, well, then—" he lifted a paper-knife and balanced it on his hand as though considering—"I shall of course have to work up my case. What do you call this man?—John Dempsey? A great fool—but I dare say I shall get enough out of him. And then—well, then I propose to present the story to Captain Ellesborough—for his future protection."

"He won't believe a word of it."

But her lips had blanched—her voice had begun to waver—and with a cruel triumph he saw that he had won the day.

"I dare say not. That's for him to consider. But if I were you, I wouldn't put him to the test."

Silence again. He saw the fluttering of her breath. With a complete change of tone, he said, smiling, in a low voice:—

"Rachel!—when did you begin to prefer Dick Tanner to me? No doubt you had a jolly time with him. I suppose I can't undo the divorce—but you would never have got it, if I hadn't been such an innocent."

She sprang up, and he saw that he had gone too far.

"If you say any more such things to me, you will get nothing from me—and you may either go—" she pointed passionately to the door—"or you may sit there till my people come back—which you like."

He looked at her, under his eyebrows, smiling mechanically—weighing the relative advantages of prudence or violence. Prudence carried the day.

"You are just the same spitfire, I see, as you used to be! All right. I see you understand. Well, now, how am I to get my money—my damages?" She turned away, and went quickly to an old bureau that had been her uncle's. He watched her, exultant. It was all true, then. Dick Tanner had been her lover, and Ellesborough knew nothing. He did not know whether to be the more triumphant in her tacit avowal, or the more enraged by the testimony borne by her acquiescence to her love for Ellesborough. He hated her; yet he had never admired her so much, as his eyes followed her stooping over the drawers of the bureau, her beautiful head and neck in a warm glow of firelight.

Then, suddenly, he began to cough. She, hunting for her cheque-book, took no notice at first. But the paroxysm grew; it shook the very life out of him; till at last she stood arrested and staring-while he fell back in his chair like a dead man, his eyes shut, his handkerchief to his lips.

"Shall I—shall I get you some brandy?" she said, coldly. He nodded assent. She hurriedly looked for her keys, and went to a cupboard in the kitchen, where Janet kept a half bottle of brandy for medical use if needed.

He drank off what she brought—but it was some time before he recovered speech. When he did it was in a low tone that made the words a curse:—-

"That's your doing!"

Her only answer was a gesture.

"It is," he insisted, speaking in gasps. "You never showed me any real love—any forbearance. You never cared for me—as you know I cared for you. You told me so once. You married me for a home—and then you deserted—and betrayed me."

There was a guilty answer in her consciousness which made her speak without anger.

"I know my own faults very well. And now you must go—we can't either of us stand this any more. Do you give me your solemn promise that you will trouble me no more—-or the man I am going to marry—if I do this for you?"

"Give me a piece of paper—" he said, huskily.

He wrote the promise, signed it, and pushed it to her. Then he carefully examined the self cheque "to bearer" which she had written.

"Well, I dare say that will see me out—and bury me decently. I shall take my family down to the sea. You know I've got a little girl—about three? Oh, I never told any lies about Anita. I've married her now."

Rachel stood like a stone, without a word. Her one consuming anxiety was to see him gone, to be done with him.

He rose slowly—with difficulty. And the cough seized him again. Rachel in a fevered exasperation watched him clinging to the table for support. Would he die—or faint—then and there—and be found by Janet, who must now be on her way home? She pressed brandy on him again. But he pushed it away. "Let me be!" She could only wait.

When he could speak and move again, he put the cheque away in his pocket, and buttoned his coat over it.

"Well, good-night." Then straightening himself, he fixed her with a pair of burning eyes. "Good-night. Anita will be kind to me—when I die—Anita will be a woman to me. You were never kind—you never thought of any one but yourself. Good-bye. Good luck!"

And walking uncertainly to the door, he opened it and was gone. She heard his slow steps in the farmyard, and the opening of the wicket gate. Then all sounds died away.

For a few minutes she crouched sobbing over the fire, weeping for sheer nervous exhaustion. Then the dread seized her of being caught in such a state by Janet, and she went upstairs, locked her door, and threw herself on her bed. The bruise of an intolerable humiliation seemed to spread through soul and body. She knew that for the first time she had confessed her wretched secret which she had thought so wholly her own—and confessed it—horrible and degrading thought!—to Roger Delane. Not in words indeed—but in act. No innocent woman would have paid the blackmail. The dark room in which she lay seemed to be haunted by Delane's exultant eyes.

And the silence was haunted too by his last words. There arose in her a reluctant and torturing pity for the wretched man who had been her husband; a pity, which passed on into a storm of moral anguish. Her whole past life looked incredibly black to her as she lay there in the dark—stained with unkindness, and selfishness, and sin.

Which saw her the more truly?—Roger, or Ellesborough?—the man who hated and cursed her, or the man who adored her?

She was struggling, manoeuvring, fighting, to keep the truth from George Ellesborough. It was quite uncertain whether she would succeed. Roger's word was a poor safeguard! But if she did, the truth itself would only the more certainly pursue and beat her down.

And again, the utter yearning for confession and an unburdened soul came upon her intolerably. The religious psychologist describes such a crisis as "conversion," or "conviction of sin," or the "working of grace." And he knows from long experience that it is the result in the human soul not so much of a sense of evil, as of a vision of good. Goodness had been brought near to Rachel in the personality—the tender self-forgetting trust—of George Ellesborough. It was goodness, not fear—goodness, unconscious of any threatened wrong—that had pierced her heart. Then a thought came to her. Janet!—Janet whose pure and loving life beside her made yet another element in the spiritual forces that were pressing upon her.

She sprang to her feet. She would tell Janet everything—put her poor secret—her all—in Janet's hands.



XIII

It was again a very still and misty night,—extraordinarily mild for the time of year. A singular brooding silence held all the woodlands above Great End Farm. There was not a breath of wind. Every dead branch that fell, every bird that moved, every mouse scratching among the fallen beech leaves, produced sounds disproportionately clear and startling, and for the moment there would be a rustle of disturbance, as though something or some one, in the forest heart, took alarm. Then the deep waters of quiet closed again, and everything—except that watching presence—slept.

The hut in Denman Wood, which had formerly played a hospitable part as the scene of many a Gargantuan luncheon to Colonel Shepherd's shooting parties, had long been an abandoned spot. All the Colonel's keepers under fifty had gone to fight; and there was left only an old head keeper, with one decrepit helper, who shot the scanty game which still survived on strict business principles, to eke out the household rations of the big house. The Ipscombe woods were rarely visited. They were a long way from the keeper's cottage, and the old man, depressed by the difference between war and pre-war conditions, found it quite enough to potter round the stubbles and turnips of the home farm when game had to be shot.

The paths leading through the underwood to the hut were now in these four years largely over-grown. A place more hidden and forgotten it would have been difficult to find. And for this reason, combined with its neighbourhood to Rachel Henderson's farm, Roger Delane had chosen to inhabit it.

It was the third night after his interview with his former wife. He reached the hut after dark, by various by-paths over the wide commons stretching between it and X—the station at which he now generally alighted. He carried in his pocket some evening newspapers, a new anthology, and a novel. Owing to an injection of morphia—a habit to which he had only lately taken—he felt unusually fit, and his brain was unusually alert. At the same time he had had a disagreeable interview with a doctor that morning who had been insisting on Sanatorium treatment if the remaining lung was to be preserved and his life prolonged. He did not want to prolong his life, but only to avoid the beastliness of pain. It seemed to him that morphia—good stuff!—was going to do that for him. Why hadn't he begun it before? But his brain was queer—he was conscious of that. He had asked the doctor about some curious mental symptoms. The reply was that phthisis was often accompanied by them.

Obsession—fixed ideas—in the medical sense: half of him, psychologically, was quite conscious that the other half was under their influence. The sound self was observing the unsound self, but apparently with no power over it. Otherwise how was it that he was here again, hiding like a wild beast in a lair, less than a mile from Great End Farm, and Rachel Henderson?

He had found his way to London in the small hours of the day following his scene with Rachel, intending to keep his promise, and let his former wife alone. The cashing of Rachel's cheque had given him and Anita some agreeable moments; though Anita was growing disturbed that he would not tell her where the money came from. They had found fresh lodgings in a really respectable Bloomsbury street; they had both bought clothes, and little Netta had been rigged out. Delane had magnificently compounded with his most pressing creditors, and had taken Anita to a theatre. But he had been discontented with her appearance there. She had really lost all her good looks. If it hadn't been for the kid—

And now, after this interval, his obsession had swooped upon him again. It was an obsession of hate—which simply could not endure, when it came to the point, that Rachel Henderson should vanish unscathed into the future of a happy marriage, while he remained the doomed failure and outcast he knew himself to be. Rachel's implied confession rankled in him like a burn. Tanner!—that wretched weakling, with his miserable daubs that nobody wanted to buy. So Rachel had gone to him, as soon as she had driven her husband away, no doubt to complain of her ill-treatment, to air her woes. The fellow had philandered round her some time, and had shown an insolent and interfering temper once or twice towards himself. Yes!—he could imagine it all!—her flight, and Tanner's maudlin sympathy—tears—caresses—the natural sequel. And then her pose of complete innocence at the divorce proceedings—the Judge's remarks. Revolting hypocrisy! If Tanner had been still alive, he would somehow have exposed him—somehow have made him pay. Lucky for him he was drowned in that boat accident on Lake Nipissing! And no doubt Rachel thought that the accident had made everything safe for her.

Every incident now, every phase of his conversation with her was assuming a monstrous and distorted significance in his mind. How easily she had yielded on the subject of the money! He might have asked a great deal more—and he would have got it. Very likely Ellesborough was well off—Yankees generally were—and she knew that what she gave Delane as hush money would make very little difference to her. Ellesborough no doubt would not look very closely into her shekels, having sufficient of his own. Otherwise it might occur to him to wonder how she had got rid of that L500. Would it pinch her? Probably, if all she had for capital was the old chap's legacy. Well—serve her right—serve her, damned, doubly right! Ellesborough's kisses would make up.

These thoughts, after a momentary respite, held him in their grip as he walked London streets. Suspicion of the past—ugly and venomous—flapped its black wings about him. Had Rachel ever been faithful to him—even in the early days? She had made acquaintance with the Tanners very soon after their marriage. Looking back, a number of small incidents and scenes poked their heads out of the dead level of the past. Rachel and Tanner, discussing the Watts photograph when Rachel first acquired it—Tanner's eager denunciatory talk—he called himself an "impressionist"—the creature!—because he couldn't draw worth a cent—Rachel all smiles and deference. She had never given him that sort of attention. Or Rachel at a housewarming in the next farm to his—Rachel in a pale green dress, the handsomest woman there, dancing with Tanner—Rachel quarrelling with him in the buggy on the way home, because he called Tanner a milksop—"He cares for beautiful things, and you don't!—but that's no reason why you should abuse him."

And what about those weeks not very long after that dance, when he had gone off to the land-sale at Edmonton (that was the journey, by the way, when he first saw Anita!), and Rachel had stayed at home, with a girl friend, a girl they knew in Winnipeg? But that girl hadn't stayed all the time. To do her justice, Rachel had made no secret of that. He remembered her attacking him when he came home for having left her for three or four days quite alone. Why had he been so long away? Probably a mere bluff—though he had been taken in by it at the time, and being still in love with her, had done his best to appease her. But what had she been doing all the time she was alone? In the light of what he knew now, she might have been doing anything. Was the child his?

So, piece by piece, with no auditor but his own brain, shut in upon himself by the isolation which his own life had forged for him, he built up a hideous indictment against the woman he had once loved. He wished he had put off his interview with her till he had had time to think things out more. As he came to realize how she had tricked and bested him, her offence became incredibly viler than it seemed at first. He had let her off far too cheaply that night at the farm. Scenes of past violence returned upon him, and the memory of them seemed to satisfy a rising thirst. Especially the recollection of the divorce proceedings maddened him. His morbid brain took hold on them with a grip that his will could not loosen. Her evidence—he had read it in the Winnipeg newspapers—the remarks of the prating old judge—and of her cad of a lawyer—good God! And all the time it was she who ought to have been in the dock, and he the accuser, if he had known—if he hadn't been a trusting idiot, a bleating fool.

A brooding intensity of rage, as this inward process went on, gradually drowned in him every other feeling and desire. The relief and amusement of the money and its spending were soon over. He thought no more of it. Anita, and his child even—the child for whom he really cared—passed out of his mind. As he sat drinking whisky in the dull respectable lodging, at night after Anita had gone to bed, he felt the sinister call of those dark woods above Rachel's farm, and tasted the sweetness of his new power to hurt her, now that she had paid him this blackmail, and damned herself thereby—past help. She had threatened him. But what could she do—or the Yankee fellow either? She had given the show away. As for his promise, when he had no right to make it,—no right to allow such a woman to get off scot-free, with plenty of money and a new lover.

So on the Thursday evening he took train for X. It was still the Armistice week. The London streets were crowded with soldiers and young women of every sort and kind. He bought a newspaper and read it in the train. It gave him a queer satisfaction—for one half of him was still always watching the other—to discover that he could feel patriotic emotion like anybody else and could be thrilled by the elation of Britain's victory—his victory. He read the telegrams, the positions on the Rhine assigned to the Second Army, and the Fourth,—General Plumer General Rawlinson—General F.—Gad! he used to know the son of that last old fellow at King's.

Then he fell to his old furtive watching of the people on the platform, the men getting in and out of the train. At any moment he might fall in with one of his old Cambridge acquaintances, in one of these smart officers, with their decorations and their red tabs. But in the first place they wouldn't travel in this third class where he was sitting—not till the war was over. And in the next, he was so changed—had taken indeed such pains to be—that it was long odds against his being recognized. Eleven years, was it, since he left Cambridge? About.

At X. he got out. The ticket collector noticed him for that faint touch of a past magnificence that still lingered in his carriage and gait; but there were so many strangers about that he was soon forgotten.

He passed under a railway arch and climbed a hill, the hill on which he had met Dempsey. At the top of the hill he left the high-road for a grass track across the common. There was just enough light from a declining moon to show him where he was. The common was full of dark shapes—old twisted thorns, and junipers, and masses of tall grass—shapes which often seemed to him to be strargely alive, the silent but conscious witnesses of his passage.

The wood was very dark. He groped his way through it with difficulty and found the hut. Once inside it, he fastened the door with a wooden bar he had himself made, and turned on his electric torch. Bit by bit in the course of his night visits he had accumulated a few necessary stores—some firewood, a few groceries hidden in a corner, a couple of brown blankets, and a small box of tools. A heap of dried bracken in a corner, raised on a substratum of old sacks, had often served him for a bed; and when he had kindled a wood fire in the rough grate of loose bricks where Colonel Shepherd's keepers had been accustomed to warm the hot meat stews sent up for the shooting luncheons, and had set out his supper on the upturned fragment of an old box which had once held meal for pheasants, he had provided at least what was necessary for his night sojourn. This food he had brought with him; a thermos bottle full of hot coffee, with slices of ham, cheese, and bread; and he ate it with appetite, sitting on a log beside the fire, and pleasantly conscious as he looked round him, like the Greek poet of long ago, of that "cuteness" of men which conjures up housing, food, and fire in earth's loneliest places. Outside that small firelit space lay the sheer silence of the wood, broken once or twice by the call and flight of an owl past the one carefully darkened window of the hut, or by the mysterious sighing and shuddering which, from time to time, would run through the crowded stems and leafless branches.

A queer "hotel" this, for mid-November! He might, if he had chosen, have been amusing himself, tant bien que mal, in one or other of those shabby haunts,—bars, night-clubs, dancing-rooms, to which his poverty and his moeurs condemned him, while his old comrades, the lads he had been brought up with at school and college, guardsmen, Hussars, and the rest, were holding high revel for the Peace at the Ritz or the Carlton; he might even, as far as money was concerned, now that he had bagged his great haul from Rachel, have been supping himself at the Ritz, if he had only had time to exchange his brother-in-law's old dress suit, which Marianne had passed on to him, for a new one, and if he could have made up his mind to the possible recognitions and rebuffs such a step would have entailed. As it was, he preferred his warm hiding-place in the heart of the woods, coupled with this exultant sense of an unseen and mysterious power which was running, like alcohol, through his nerves.

Real alcohol, however, was not wanting to his solitary meal. He drenched his coffee in the cognac he always carried about with him, and then, cigarette in hand, he fell back on the heap of bracken to read a while. The novel he sampled and threw away; the anthology soon bored him; and he spent the greater part of two hours lying on his back, smoking and thinking—till it was safe to assume that the coast was clear round Great End Farm. About ten o'clock, he slipped noiselessly out of the hut, after covering up the fire to wait for his return, and hiding as far as he could the other traces of his occupation. The damp mist outside held all the wood stifled, and the darkness was profound. Stepping as lightly as possible, and using his torch with the utmost precaution, he gradually made his way to the edge of the wood, and the lip of the basin beyond it. On the bare down was enough faint moonlight to see by, and he extinguished his little lantern before leaving the wood. Below him were the dim outlines of the farm, a shadowy line of road beyond, and, as it were, a thicker fold of darkness, to mark the woods on the horizon. There was not a light anywhere; the village was invisible, and he listened for a long time without hearing anything but the rush of a distant train.

Ah!—Yes, there was a sound down there in the hollow—footsteps, reverberating in the silence. He bent his head listening intently. The footsteps seemed to approach the farm, then the sounds ceased, till suddenly, on the down slope below him, he saw something moving. He threw back his head with a quiet laugh.

The Ipscombe policeman, no doubt, on his round. Would he come up the hill? Hardly, on such a misty night. If not, his retreating steps on the farm lane would soon tell his departure.

In a few minutes, indeed, the click of an opening gate could be clearly heard through the mist, and afterwards, steps. They grew fainter and fainter. All clear!

Choosing a circuitous route, Delane crept down the hill, and reached a spot on the down-side rather higher than the farm enclosure, from which the windows of the farm-house could be seen. There was a faint light in one of the upper two—in which he had some reason to think was that of Rachel's bedroom. It seemed to him the window was open; he perceived something like the swaying of a blind inside it. The night was marvellously mild for mid-November; and he remembered Rachel's old craving for air, winter and summer.

The light moved, there was a shadow behind the blind, and suddenly the window was thrown up widely, and a pale figure—a woman's figure—stood in the opening. Rachel, no doubt! Delane slipped behind a thorn growing on the bare hill-side. His heart thumped. Instinctively his hand groped for something in his pocket. If she had guessed that he was there—within twenty yards of her!

Then, as he watched the faint apparition in the mist, it roused in him a fresh gust of rage. Rachel, the sentimental Rachel, unable to sleep—Rachel, happy and serene, thinking of her lover—the lies of her divorce all forgotten—and the abominable Roger cut finally out of her life!—

The figure disappeared; he heard the closing of the window, which was soon dark. Then he crept down to the farm wall, and round the corner of it to that outer cart-shed, where he had bound up his bleeding hand on the night when Halsey—silly ass!—had seen the ghost. He did not dare to smoke lest spark or smell might betray him. Sitting on a heap of sacks in a sheltered corner, his hands hanging over his knees, he spent some long time brooding and pondering—conscious all the while of the hidden and silent life of the house and farm at his back. By now he fancied he understood the evening ways of the place. The two girls went up to bed first, about nine; the two ladies, about an hour later; and the farm bailiff as a rule did not sleep on the premises, though there was a bed in the loft over the stable which could be used on occasion. That window, too, through which he had watched the pair of lovers, when the Yankee discovered him—that also seemed to fit into a scheme.

Yes!—the Yankee had discovered him. His start, his sudden movement as though to make a rush at the window, had shown it. Meanwhile Delane had not waited for developments. Quick as thought he had made for one of those sunken climbing lanes in which the chalk downs of the district abound, a lane which lay to the south of the farm, while the green terraced path connected with the ghost-story lay to the north of it. No doubt there had been a hue and cry, a search of the farm and its immediate neighbourhood. But the night was dark and the woods wide. Once in their shelter, he had laughed at pursuit. What had the Yankee said to Rachel? And since he had stopped her in the lane, what had Rachel been saying to the Yankee? Had she yet explained that the face he had seen at the window—supposing always that he had told her what he had seen—and why shouldn't he?—was not the face of a casual tramp or lunatic, but the face of a discarded husband, to whom all the various hauntings and apparitions at the farm had been really due?

That was the question—the all-important question. Clearly some one—Ellesborough probably—had given a warning to the police. On what theory?—ghost?—tramp?—or husband?

Or had Rachel just held her tongue, and had the Yankee been led to believe that the husband—for Rachel must have owned up about the husband though she did call herself Miss Henderson!—was still some thousands of miles away—in Canada—safely dead and buried, as far as Rachel was concerned?

On the whole, he thought it most probable that Rachel had held her tongue about his reappearance. If she had thought it worth while to bribe him so heavily, it was not very likely that she would now herself have set the American on the track of a secret which she so evidently did not want an expectant bridegroom to know.

The American—d—n him! A furious and morbid jealousy rushed upon the man crouching under the cart-shed. The world was rapidly reducing itself for him to these two figures—figures of hate—figures against whom he felt himself driven by a kind of headlong force, a force of destruction.

How still the farm was, except for the movements of the cows inside the shippen at his back, or of the horses in the stable! Rachel, no doubt, was now asleep. In the old days he had often—enviously—watched her tumble asleep as soon as her bright head was on the pillow; while in his own case sleep had been for years a difficult business.

Somebody else would watch her sleeping now.

Yes, if he, the outcast, allowed it. And again the frenzied sense of power swept through him. If he allowed it! It rested with him.

The following day, Ellesborough set out in the early afternoon for Great End Farm, the bearer of much news.

The day was dark and rainy, with almost a gale blowing, but his spirits had never been higher. The exultation of the great victory, the incredible Victory, seemed to breathe upon him from the gusty wind, to be driving the westerly clouds, and crying in all the noises of the woods. Was it really over?—over and done?—the agony of these four years—the hourly sacrifice of irreplaceable life—the racking doubt as to the end—the torturing question in every conscious mind—"Is there a God in Heaven—a God who cares for men—or is there not?"

He could have shouted the answer aloud—"There is—there is a God! And He is just."

Faith was natural to him, and nourished on his new happiness no less than on the marvellous issue of the war, it set his heart singing on this dull winter's day. How should he find her? Threshing, perhaps, in the big barn, and he would turn to, and work with her and the girls till work was done, and they could have the sitting-room to themselves, and he could tell her all his news. Janet—the ever-kind and thoughtful Janet—would see to that. The more he saw of the farm-life the more he admired Janet. She was a little slow. She was not clever; and she had plenty of small prejudices which amused him. But she was the salt of the earth. Trust her—lean upon her—she would never let you down. And now he was going to trust his beloved to her—for a while.

Yes—Rachel and the girls, they were all in the high barn, feeding the greedy maw of the threshing machine; a business which strained muscles and backs, and choked noses and throats with infinitesimal particles of oil and the fine flying chaff. He watched Rachel a few minutes as she lifted and pitched—a typical figure of a New Labour, which is also a New Beauty, on this old earth. Then he drew her away, flung off his tunic, and took her place, while she, smiling and panting, her hands on her sides, leaned against the wall, and watched in her turn.

Then when the engine stopped, and the great hopper full of grain lay ready for the miller, they found themselves alone in the barn for a minute. The girls and Janet had gone to milk, and Hastings with them. There was a lantern in the barn, which showed Rachel in the swirl of the corn dust with which the barn was full, haloed and golden with it, like a Homeric goddess in a luminous cloud. Her soft brown head, her smile, showing the glint of her white teeth, her eyes, and all the beauty of her young form, in its semi-male dress—they set his blood on fire. Just as he was, in his khaki shirt-sleeves, he came to her, and took her in his arms. She clung to him passionately.

"I thought you were never coming."

It was one of the reproaches that have no sting.

"I came at the first moment. I left a score of things undone."

"Have you been thinking of me?"

"Always—always. And you?"

"Nearly always," she said teasingly. "But I have been making up my accounts."

"Avaricious woman!—thinking of nothing but money. Dear—I have several bits of news for you. But let me wash!" He held out his hands—"I am not fit to touch you!"

She disengaged herself quietly.

"What news?"

"Some letters first," he said, smiling. "A budget and a half—mostly for you, from all my home people. Can you face it?"

"In reply to your cable?"

"My most extravagant cable! On the top of course of sacks of letters!"

"Before we were engaged?"

He laughed as he thrust his arms into his tunic.

"My mother seems to have guessed from my very first mention of you."

"But—she doesn't know yet?" said Rachel, slowly.

They had passed out of the range of the lantern. He could not see her face, could only just hear her voice.

"No, not yet, dear. My last long letter should reach her next week."

Her hand lay close in his as they groped their way to the door. When he unlatched it they came out into the light of a stormy sunset. The rain had momentarily ceased, and there were fiery lines of crimson burning their way through the black cloud masses in the western sky. The red light caught Rachel's face and hair. But even so, it seemed to him that she was pale.

"I say—you've done too much threshing!" he said with energy. "Don't do any more—get an extra man."

"Can't find one," she said, laughing at him, but rather languidly. "I'll go and get the tea ready."

He went off to wash, and when he entered the sitting-room a little later, she too was fresh and neat again, in a new frock of some soft bluish-green stuff, which pleased his eye amazingly. Outside, the sunset was dying rapidly, and at a sign from her, he drew down the blinds over the two windows, and pulled the curtains close. He stood at the window looking at the hill-side for a moment with the blind in his hand. He was recalling the face he had seen, of which neither he nor any one else had yet said a word to Rachel; recalling also his talk with one of the Millsborough police the day before. "Nothing more heard of him, Captain. Oh, we get queer people about these hills sometimes. It's a very lonely bit of country. Why, a year ago, we were hunting a couple of German prisoners about these commons for days!"

"Any more ghosts?" he said lightly, glancing round at Rachel, as he drew the curtains across.

"Not that I know of. Come and have your tea."

He took a cup from her hand, and leaning against the chimney surveyed the room with a radiant face. Then he stooped over her and said:—

"I love this little room! Don't you?"

She made a restless movement.

"I don't know. Why do you love it?"

"As if you didn't know!" Their eyes met, his intense and passionate,—hers, less easy to read. "Darling, I have some other news for you. I think you'll like it—though it'll separate us for a little."

And drawing a letter from his pocket, he handed it to her. It was a letter from the American Headquarters, offering him immediate work in the American Intelligence Department at Coblentz.

"Some friends of mine there, seem to have been getting busy about me. You see I know German pretty well."

And he explained to her that as a boy he had spent a year in Germany before going to Yale. She scarcely listened, so absorbed was she in the official letter.

"When must you go?" she said at last, looking up.

"At the end of next week, I'm afraid."

"And how long will it be?"

"That I don't know. But three or four months certainly. It will put off our wedding, dearest, a bit. But you'd like me to go, wouldn't you? I should be at the hub of things."

The colour rushed into her cheeks.

"Must you go?"

Her manner amazed him. He had expected that one so ambitious and energetic in her own way of life would have greeted his news with eagerness. The proposal was really a great compliment to him—and a great chance.

"I don't see how I could refuse it," he said with an altered countenance. "Indeed—I don't think I could."

She dropped her face into her hands, and stared into the fire. In some trouble of mind, he knelt down beside her, and put his arm round her.

"I'll write every day. It won't be long, darling."

She shook her head, and he felt a shudder run through her.

"It's silly of me—I don't know why—but—I'm just afraid—"

"Afraid of what?"

She smiled at him tremulously—but he saw the tears in her eyes.

"I told you—I can't always help it. I'm a fool, I suppose—but—"

Then she threw her arms round his neck—murmuring in his ear: "You'll have time to think—when you're away from me—that it was a great pity—you ever asked me."

He kissed and scolded her, till she smiled again. Afterwards she made a strong effort to discuss the thing reasonably. Of course he must go—it would be a great opening—a great experience. And they would have all the more time to consider their own affairs. But all the evening afterwards he felt in some strange way that he had struck her a blow from which she was trying in vain to rally. Was it all the effect of her suffering at that brute's hands—aided by the emotion and strain of the recent scenes between herself and him?

As for her, when she turned back from the gate where she had bid him good-bye, she saw Janet in the doorway waiting for her almost with a sense of exasperation. She had not yet said one word to Janet. That plunge was all to take!



XIV

Rachel woke the following morning in that dreary mood when all the colour and the glamour seem to have been washed out of life, and the hopes and dreams which keep up a perpetual chatter in every normal mind are suddenly dumb.

How was she going to face Ellesborough's long absence? It had been recently assumed between them that he would be very soon released from his forestry post, that the infantry commission he had been promised would come to nothing, now the Armistice was signed, and that in a very few weeks they would be free to think only of themselves and their own future. This offer of Intelligence work at the American Headquarters had changed everything.

In ten days, if nothing happened, he would be gone, and she would be left behind to grapple alone with Roger—who might at any moment torment her again; with the presence of Dempsey, who was thinking of settling in the village, and for whom she would be called upon very soon to fulfil the hopes she had raised in him; and finally, with the struggle and misery in her own mind.

But something must happen. As she was dressing by candle-light in the winter dawn, her thoughts were rushing forward—leaping some unexplored obstacles lying in the foreground—to a possible marriage before Ellesborough went to France; just a quiet walk to a registry office, without any fuss or any witness but Janet. If she could reach that haven, she would be safe; and this dumb fever of anxiety, this terrified conviction that in the end Fate would somehow take him from her, would be soothed away.

But how to reach it? For there was now between them, till they also were revealed and confessed, a whole new series of events: not only the Tanner episode, but Delane's reappearance, her interview with him, her rash attempt to silence Dempsey. By what she had done in her bewilderment and fear, in order to escape the penalty of frankness, she might only—as she was now beginning to perceive—have stumbled into fresh dangers. It was as though she stood on the friable edge of some great crater, some gulf of destruction, on which her feet were perpetually slipping and sinking, and only Ellesborough's hold could ultimately save her.

And Janet's—Janet's first. Rachel's thought clung to her, as the shipwrecked Southern sailor turns to his local saint to intercede for him with the greater spiritual lights. Janet's counsel and help—she knew she must ask for them—that it was the next step. Yet she had been weakly putting it off day by day. And through this mist of doubt and dread, there kept striking all the time, as though quite independent of it, the natural thoughts of a woman in love.

During the farm breakfast, hurried through by candle-light, with rain beating on the windows, Rachel was thinking—"Why didn't he propose it?"—this scheme of marrying before he went. Wasn't it a most natural thing to occur to him? She tormented herself all the morning with the problem of his silence.

Then—as though in rebuke of her folly—at midday came a messenger, a boy on a bicycle, with a letter. She took it up to her own room, and read it with fluttering breath—laughing, yet with tears in her eyes.

"My Darling—What an idiot I was last night! This morning I have woke up to a brilliant idea—why I didn't propose it to you yesterday I can't imagine! Let us marry before I go. Meet me in London, a week to-day, and let us go into the country, or to the sea, for a blessed forty-eight hours, afterwards. Then you will see me off—and I shall know, wherever I go, that you are my very, very own, and I am yours. I don't want to hurry you. Take time to think, and write to me to-night, or wire me to-morrow morning. But the very idea that you may say 'Yes' makes me the happiest of men. Take time to think—but—all the same—don't keep me too long waiting!

"Your own,

"G.E."

All day she kept the letter hidden in the loose front of her dress. "I'll wire to-morrow morning," she thought. But before that—something had got to happen. Every now and then she would pause in her own work to watch Janet—Janet butter-making, Janet feeding the calves, Janet cooking—for on that homely figure in white cap and apron everything seemed to depend.

The frost had come, and clear skies with it. The day passed in various miscellaneous business, under shelter, in the big barn.

And at night, after supper, Rachel stood on the front steps looking into a wide starry heaven, moonless, cold, and still. Betty and Jenny had just gone up to bed. Janet was in the kitchen, putting the porridge for the morrow's breakfast which she had just made into the hay-box, which would keep it steaming all night. But she would soon have done work. The moment seemed to have come.

Rachel walked into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. The supper had been cleared away and the table on which they had eaten it shone spotlessly clean and bare. The fire would soon be raked out for the night, and Janet would lay the breakfast before she left the kitchen. Everything was in the neatest possible order, and the brilliant polish of a great stew-pan hanging on the wall particularly caught the eye. Janet was humming to herself—one of the war tunes—when Rachel entered.

"Janet, I want to speak to you."

Janet looked up—startled. And yet something in her was not startled! She had been strangely expectant all these days. It seemed to her she had already seen Rachel come in like that—had already heard her say those words.

She shut up the hay-box, and came gently forward.

"Here, Rachel?"

"You've nearly done?"

"In a few minutes. If you'll go into the sitting-room, I'll join you directly."

And while she hurried through the rest of her work, her mind was really running forward in prophecy. She more or less knew what she was going to hear. And as she closed the kitchen door behind her there was in her a tremulous sense as though of some sacred responsibility.

Rachel was crouching over the fire as usual, and Janet drew up a stool beside her, and laid a hand on her knee.

"What is it?"

Rachel turned.

"I told you one secret, Janet, the other day. Now this is another. And it's—" She flushed, and broke off, beginning again after a moment—"I didn't mean to tell you, or any one. I can't make up my mind whether I'm bound to or not. But I want you to advise me, Janet. I'm awfully troubled."

And suddenly, she slipped to the floor, and laid her head against Janet's knees, hiding her face.

Janet bent over her, instinctively caressing the brown hair. She was only three or four years older than Rachel, but she looked much older, and the close linen cap she wore on butter-making afternoons, and had not yet removed, gave her a gently austere look, like that of a religious.

"Tell me—I'll do my best."

"In the first place," said Rachel, in a low voice, "who do you think was the ghost?"

"What do you mean?"

"The ghost—was Roger Delane!"

Janet uttered an exclamation of surprise and horror—while fact after fact rushed together in her mind, fitting into one explanatory whole. Why had she never thought of that possibility, among all the others?

"Oh, Rachel, have you ever seen him?"

"Twice. He stopped me on the road, when I was coming back from Millsborough on Armistice Day. And he came to see me the day after. You remember you were astonished to find I had sent the girls to the Shepherds' dance? I did it to get them out of the way—and if you hadn't said you were going to that service I should have had to invent something to send you away."