"I know. It does, dreadfully," said Mary.

She summoned a flash and let him have it. "But she's magnificent."

"Magnificent!" he echoed with his robust enthusiasm.

But what he thought was that it was magnificent of Mrs. Rowcliffe to praise her sister.

And Rowcliffe smiled grimly at young Grierson and his Platonic passion. He said to himself, "If I'd only known. If I'd only had the sense to wait six months. Grierson would have done just as well for Molly."

Still, though Grierson had come too late, he welcomed him and his Platonic passion. It wasn't good for Grierson but it was good for Molly. At least, he supposed it was better for her than nothing. And for him it was infinitely better. It kept Grierson off Gwenda.

* * * * *

Young Grierson was right when he said that Gwenda didn't see that he was there. He had been two years in Garthdale and she was as far from seeing it as ever. He didn't mind; he was even amused by her indifference, only he couldn't help thinking that it was rather odd of her, considering that he was there.

The village, as simple in its thinking as young Grierson, shared his view. It thought that it was something more than odd. And it had a suspicion that Mrs. Rowcliffe was at the bottom of it. She wouldn't be happy if she didn't get that young man away from her sister. The village hinted that it wouldn't be for the first time.

* * * * *

But in two years, with the gradual lifting of the pressure that had numbed her, Gwenda had become aware. Not of young Grierson, but of her own tragedy, of the slow life that dragged her, of its relentless motion and its mass. Now that her father's need of her was intermittent she was alive to the tightness of the tie. It had been less intolerable when it had bound her tighter; when she hadn't had a moment; when it had dragged her all the time. Its slackening was torture. She pulled then, and was jerked on her chain.

It was not only that Rowcliffe's outburst had waked her and made her cruelly aware. He had timed it badly, in her moment of revived lucidity, the moment when she had become vulnerable again. She was the more sensitive because of her previous apathy, as if she had died and was new-born to suffering and virgin to pain.

What hurt her most was her father's gentleness. She could stand his fits of irritation and obstinacy; they braced her, they called forth her will. But she was defenseless against his pathos, and he knew it. He had phrases that wrung her heart. "You're a good girl, Gwenda." "I'm only an irritable old man, my dear. You mustn't mind what I say." She suffered from the incessant drain on her pity; for she wanted all her will if she was to stand against Rowcliffe. Pity was a dangerous solvent in which her will sank and was melted away.

There were moments when she saw herself as two women. One had still the passion and the memory of freedom. The other was a cowed and captive creature who had forgotten; whose cramped motions guided her; whose instinct of submission she abhorred.

* * * * *

Her isolation was now extreme. She had had nothing to give to any friends she might have made. Rowcliffe had taken all that was left of her. And now, when intercourse was possible, it was they who had withdrawn. They shared Mr. Grierson's inability to make her out. They had heard rumors; they imagined things; they remembered also. She was the girl who had raced all over the country with Dr. Rowcliffe, the girl whom Dr. Rowcliffe, for all their racing, had not cared to marry. She was the girl who had run away from home to live with a dubious step-mother; and she was the sister of that awful Mrs. Greatorex, who—well, everybody knew what Mrs. Greatorex was.

Gwenda Cartaret, like her younger sister, had been talked about. Not so much in the big houses of the Dale. The queer facts had been tossed up and down a smokeroom for one season and then dropped. In the big houses they didn't remember Gwenda Cartaret. They only remembered to forget her.

But in the little shops and in the little houses in Morfe there had been continual whispering. They said that even after Dr. Rowcliffe's marriage to that nice wife of his, who was her own sister, the two had been carrying on. If there wasn't any actual harm done, and maybe there wasn't, the doctor had been running into danger. He was up at Garthdale more than he need be now that the old Vicar was about again. And they had been seen together. The head gamekeeper at Garthdale had caught them more than once out on the moor, and after dark too. It was said in the little houses that it wasn't the doctor's fault. (In the big houses judgment had been more impartial, but Morfe was loyal to its doctor.) It was hers, every bit, you might depend on it. Of Rowcliffe it was said that maybe he'd been tempted, but he was a good man, was Dr. Rowcliffe, and he'd stopped in time. Because they didn't know what Gwenda Cartaret was capable of, they believed, like the Vicar, that she was capable of anything.

It was only in her own village that they knew. The head gamekeeper had never told his tale in Garth. It would have made him too unpopular.

* * * * *

Gwenda Cartaret remained unaware of what was said. Rumor protected her by cutting her off from its own sources.

And she had other consolations besides her ignorance. So long as she knew that Rowcliffe cared for her and always had cared, it did not seem to matter to her so much that he had married Mary. She actually considered that, of the two, Mary was the one to be pitied; it was so infinitely worse to be married to a man who didn't care for you than not to be married to a man who did.

Of course, there was the tie. Her sister had outward and visible possession of him. But she said to herself "I wouldn't give what I have for that, if I can't have both."

And of course there was Steven, and Steven's misery which was more unbearable to her than her own. At least she thought it was more unbearable. She didn't ask herself how bearable it would have been if Steven's marriage had brought him a satisfaction that denied her and cast her out.

For she was persuaded that Steven also had his consolation. He knew that she cared for him. She conceived this knowledge of theirs as constituting an immaterial and immutable possession of each other. And it did not strike her that this knowledge might be less richly compensating to Steven than to her.

* * * * *

Her woman's passion, forced inward, sustained her with an inward peace, an inward exaltation. And in this peace, this exaltation, it became one with her passion for the place.

She was unaware of what was happening in her. She did not know that her soul had joined the two beyond its own power to put asunder. She still looked on her joy in the earth as a solitary emotion untouched by any other. She still said to herself "Nothing can take this away from me."

For she had hours, now and again, when she shook off the slave-woman who held her down. In those hours her inner life moved with the large rhythm of the seasons and was soaked in the dyes of the visible world; and the visible world, passing into her inner life, took on its radiance and intensity. Everything that happened and that was great and significant in its happening, happened there.

Outside nothing happened; nothing stood out; nothing moved. No procession of events trod down or blurred her perfect impressions of the earth and sky. They eternalised themselves in memory. They became her memory.

The days were carved for her in the lines of the hills and painted for her in their colors; days that were dim green and gray, when the dreaming land was withdrawn under a veil so fine that it had the transparency of water, or when the stone walls, the humble houses and the high ramparts, drenched with mist and with secret sunlight, became insubstantial; days when all the hills were hewn out of one opal; days that had the form of Karva under snow, and the thin blues and violets of the snow. She remembered purely, without thinking, "It was in April that I went away from Steven," or, "It was in November that he married Mary," or "It was in February that we knew about Ally, and Father had his stroke."

Her nature was sound and sane; it refused to brood over suffering. She was not like Alice and in her unlikeness she lacked some of Alice's resources. She couldn't fling herself on to a Polonaise of a Sonata any more than she could lie on a couch all day and look at her own white hands and dream. Her passion found no outlet in creating violent and voluptuous sounds. It was passive, rather, and attentive. Cut off from all contacts of the flesh, it turned to the distant and the undreamed. Its very senses became infinitely subtle; they discerned the hidden soul of the land that had entranced her.

There were no words for this experience. She had no sense of self in it and needed none. It seemed to her that she was what she contemplated, as if all her senses were fused together in the sense of seeing and what her eyes saw they heard and touched and felt.

But when she came to and saw herself seeing, she said, "At least this is mine. Nobody, not even Steven, can take it away from me."

* * * * *

She also reminded herself that she had Alice.

She meant Alice Greatorex. Alice Cartaret, oppressed by her own "awfulness," had loved her with a sullen selfish love, the love of a frustrated and unhappy child. But there was no awfulness in Alice Greatorex. In the fine sanity of happiness she showed herself as good as gold.

Marriage, that had made Mary hard, made Alice tender. Mary was wrapped up in her husband and her house, and in her social relations and young Grierson's Platonic passion, so tightly wrapped that these things formed round her an impenetrable shell. They hid a secret and inaccessible Mary.

Alice was wrapped up in her husband and children, in the boy of three who was so like Gwenda, and in the baby girl who was so like Greatorex. But through them she had become approachable. She had the ways of some happy household animal, its quick rushes of affection, and its gaze, the long, spiritual gaze of its maternity, mysterious and appealing. She loved Gwenda with a sad-eyed, remorseful love. She said to herself, "If I hadn't been so awful, Gwenda might have married Steven." She saw the appalling extent of Gwenda's sacrifice. She saw it as it was, monstrous, absurd, altogether futile.

It was the futility of it that troubled Alice most. Even if Gwenda had been capable of sacrificing herself for Mary, which had been by no means her intention, that would have been futile too. Alice was of Rowcliffe's opinion that young Grierson would have done every bit as well for Mary.

Better, for Mary had no children.

"And how," said Alice, "could she expect to have them?"

She saw in Mary's childlessness not only God's but Nature's justice.

* * * * *

There were moments when Mary saw it too. But she left God out of it and called it Nature's cruelty.

If it was not really Gwenda. For in flashes of extreme lucidity Mary put it down to Rowcliffe's coldness.

And she had come to know that Gwenda was responsible for that.



LVI

But one day in April, in the fourth year of her marriage, Mary sent for Gwenda.

Rowcliffe was out on his rounds. She had thought of that. She was fond of having Gwenda with her in Rowcliffe's absence, when she could talk to her about him in a way that assumed his complete indifference to Gwenda and utter devotion to herself. Gwenda was used to this habit of Mary's and thought nothing of it.

She found her in Rowcliffe's study, the room that she knew better than any other in his house. The window was closed. The panes cut up the colors of the orchard and framed them in small squares.

Mary received her with a gentle voice and a show of tenderness. She said very little. They had tea together, and when Gwenda would have gone Mary kept her.

She still said very little. She seemed to brood over some happy secret.

Presently she spoke. She told her secret.

And when she had told it she turned her eyes to Gwenda with a look of subtle penetration and of triumph.

"At last," she said,—"After three years."

And she added, "I knew you would be glad."

"I am glad," said Gwenda.

She was glad. She was determined to be glad. She looked glad. And she kissed Mary and said again that she was very glad.

But as she walked back the four miles up Garthdale under Karva, she felt an aching at her heart which was odd considering how glad she was.

She said to herself, "I will be glad. I want Mary to be happy. Why shouldn't I be glad? It's not as if it could make any difference."



LVII

In September Mary sent for her again.

Mary was very ill. She lay on her bed, and Rowcliffe and her sister stood on either side of her. She gazed from one to the other with eyes of terror and entreaty. It was as if she cried out to them—the two who were so strong—to help her. She stretched out her arms on the counterpane, one arm toward each of them; her little hands, palm-upward, implored them.

Each of them laid a hand in Mary's hand that closed on it with a clutch of agony.

Rowcliffe had sat up all night with her. His face was white and haggard and there was fear and misery in his eyes. They never looked at Gwenda's lest they should see the same fear and the same misery there. It was as if they had no love for each other, only a profound and secret pity that sprang in both of them from their fear.

Only once they found each other, outside on the landing, when they had left Mary alone with Hyslop, the old doctor from Reyburn, and the nurse. Each spoke once.

"Steven, is there really any danger?"

"Yes. I wish to God I'd had Harker. Do you mind sending him a wire? I must go and see what that fool Hyslop's doing."

He turned back again into the room.

Gwenda went out and sent the wire.

But at noon, before Harker could come to them, it was over. Mary lay as Alice had lain, weak and happy, with her child tucked in the crook of her arm. And she smiled at it dreamily.

The old doctor and the nurse smiled at Rowcliffe.

It couldn't, they said, have gone off more easily. There hadn't been any danger, nor any earthly reason to have sent for Harker. Though, of course, if it had made Rowcliffe happier—!

The old doctor added that if it had been anybody else's wife Rowcliffe would have known that it was going all right.

And in the evening, when her sister stood again at her bedside, as Mary lifted the edge of the flannel that hid her baby's face, she looked at Gwenda and smiled, not dreamily but subtly in a triumph that was almost malign.

That night Gwenda dreamed that she saw Mary lying dead and with a dead child in the crook of her arm.

She woke in anguish and terror.



LVIII

Three years passed and six months. The Cartarets had been in Garthdale nine years.

Gwenda Cartaret sat in the dining-room at the Vicarage alone with her father.

It was nearly ten o'clock of the March evening. They waited for the striking of the clock. It would be prayer time then, and after prayers the Vicar would drag himself upstairs to bed, and in the peace that slid into the room when he left it Gwenda would go on with her reading.

She had her sewing in her lap and her book, Bergson's Evolution creatrice propped open before her on the table. She sewed as she read. For the Vicar considered that sewing was an occupation and that reading was not. He was silent as long as his daughter sewed and when she read he talked. Toward ten his silence would be broken by a continual sighing and yearning. The Vicar longed for prayer time to come and end his day. But he had decreed that prayer time was ten o'clock and he would not have permitted it to come a minute sooner.

He nursed a book on his knees, but he made no pretence of reading it. He had taken off his glasses and sat with his hands folded, in an attitude of utter resignation to his own will.

In the kitchen Essy Gale sat by the dying fire and waited for the stroke of ten. And as she waited she stitched at the torn breeches of her little son.

Essy had come back to the house where she had been turned away. For her mother was wanted by Mrs. Greatorex at Upthorne and what Mrs. Greatorex wanted she got. There were two more children now at the Farm and work enough for three women in the house. And Essy, with all her pride, had not been too proud to come back. She had no feeling but pity for the old man, her master, who had bullied her and put her to shame. If it pleased God to afflict him that was God's affair, and, even as a devout Wesleyan, Essy considered that God had about done enough.

As Essy sat and stitched, she smiled, thinking of Greatorex's son who lay in her bed in the little room over the kitchen. Miss Gwenda let her have him with her on the nights when Mrs. Gale slept up at the Farm.

It was quiet in the Vicarage kitchen. The door into the back yard was shut, the door that Essy used to keep open when she listened for a footstep and a whisper. That door had betrayed her many a time when the wind slammed it to.

Essy's heart was quiet as the heart of her sleeping child. She had forgotten how madly it had leaped to her lover's footsteps, how it had staggered at the slamming of the door. She had forgotten the tears that she had shed when Alice's wild music had rocked the house, and what the Vicar had said to her that night when she spilled the glass of water in the study.

But she remembered that Gwenda had given her son his first little Sunday suit; and that, before Jimmy came, when Essy was in bed, crying with the face-ache, she had knocked at her door and said, "What is it, Essy? Can I do anything for you?" She could hear her saying it now.

Essy's memory was like that.

She had thought of Gwenda just then because she heard the sound of Dr. Rowcliffe's motor car tearing up the Dale.

* * * * *

The woman in the other room heard it too. She had heard its horn hooting on the moor road nearly a mile away.

She raised her hand and listened. It hooted again, once, twice, placably, at the turning of the road, under Karva. She shivered at the sound.

It hooted irritably, furiously, as the car tore through the village. Its lamps swung a shaft of light over the low garden wall.

At the garden gate the car made a shuddering pause.

Gwenda's face and all her body listened. A little unborn, undying hope quivered in her heart always at that pausing of the car at her gate.

It hardly gave her time for one heart-beat before she heard the grinding of the gear as the car took the steep hill to Upthorne.

But she was always taken in by it. She had always that insane hope that the course of things had changed and that Steven had really stopped at the gate and was coming to her.

* * * * *

It was insanity, for she knew that Rowcliffe would never come to see her in the evening now. After his outburst, more than five years ago, there was no use pretending to each other that they were safe. He had told her plainly that, if she wanted him to hold out, he must never be long alone with her at any time, and he must give up coming to see her late at night. It was much too risky.

"When I can come and see you that way," he had said, "it'll mean that I've left off caring. But I'll look in every Wednesday if I can. Every Wednesday as long as I live."

He had come now and then, not on a Wednesday, but "that way." He had not been able to help it. But he had left longer and longer intervals between. And he had never come ("that way") since last year, when his second child was born.

Nothing but life or death would bring Rowcliffe out in his car after nightfall. Yet the thing had her every time. And it was as if her heart was ground with the grinding and torn with the tearing of the car.

Then she said to herself, "I must end it somehow. It's horrible to go on caring like this. He was right. It would be better not to see him at all."

And she began counting the days and the hours till Wednesday when she would see him.



LIX

Wednesday was still the Vicar's day for visiting his parish. It was also Rowcliffe's day for visiting his daughter. But the Vicar was not going to change it on that account. On Wednesday, if it was a fine afternoon, she was always sure of having Rowcliffe to herself.

Rowcliffe himself had become the creature of unalterable habit.

She was conscious now of the normal pulse of time, a steady pulse that beat with a large rhythm, a measure of seven days, from Wednesday to Wednesday.

She filled the days between with reading and walking and parish work.

There had been changes in Garthdale. Mr. Grierson had got married in one of his bursts of enthusiasm and had gone away. His place had been taken by Mr. Macey, the strenuous son of a Durlingham grocer. Mr. Macey had got into the Church by sheer strenuousness and had married, strenuously, a sharp and sallow wife. Between them they left very little parish work for Gwenda.

She had become a furious reader. She liked hard stuff that her brain could bite on. It fell on a book and gutted it, throwing away the trash. She read all the modern poets and novelists she cared about, English and foreign. They left her stimulated but unsatisfied. There were not enough good ones to keep her going. She worked through the Elizabethan dramatists and all the Vicar's Tudor Classics, and came on Jowett's Translations of the Platonic Dialogues by the way, and was lured on the quest of Ultimate Reality, and found that there was nothing like Thought to keep you from thinking. She took to metaphysics as you take to dram-drinking. She must have strong, heavy stuff that drugged her brain. And when she found that she could trust her intellect she set it deliberately to fight her passion.

At first it was an even match, for Gwenda's intellect, like her body, was robust. It generally held its ground from Thursday morning till Tuesday night. But the night that followed Wednesday afternoon would see its overthrow.

This Wednesday it fought gallantly till the very moment of Steven's arrival. She was still reading Bergson, and her brain struggled to make out the sense and rhythm of the sentences across the beating of her heart.

After seven years her heart still beat at Steven's coming.

It remained an excitement and adventure, for she never knew how he would be. Sometimes he hadn't a word to say to her and left her miserable. Sometimes, after a hard day's work, he would be tired and heavy; she saw him middle-aged and her heart would ache for him. Sometimes he would be young almost as he used to be. She knew that he was only young for her. He was young because he loved her. She had never seen him so with Mary. Sometimes he would be formal and frigid. He talked to her as a man talks to a woman he is determined to keep at a distance. She hated Steven then, as passion hates. He had come before now in a downright bad temper and was the old, irritable Steven who found fault with everything she said and did. And she had loved him for it as she had loved the old Steven. It was his queer way of showing that he loved her.

But he had not been like that for a very long time. He had grown gentler as he had grown older.

To-day he showed her more than one of his familiar moods. She took them gladly as so many signs of his unchanging nature.

He still kept up his way of coming in, the careful closing of the door, the slight pause there by the threshold, the look that sought her and that held her for an instant before their hands met.

She saw it still as the look that pleaded with her while it caressed her, that said, "I know we oughtn't to be so pleased to see each other, but we can't help it, can we?"

It was the look of his romantic youth.

As long as she saw it there it was nothing to her that Rowcliffe had changed physically, that he moved more heavily, that his keenness and his slenderness were going, that she saw also a slight thickening of his fine nose, a perceptible slackening of the taut muscles of his mouth, and a decided fulness about his jaw and chin. She saw all these things; but she did not see that his romantic youth lay dying in the pathos of his eyes and that if it pleaded still it pleaded forgiveness for the sin of dying.

His hand fell slackly from hers as she took it.

It was as if they were still on their guard, still afraid of each other's touch.

As he sat in the chair that faced hers he held his hands clasped loosely in front of him, and looked at them with a curious attention, as if he wondered what kind of hands they were that could resist holding her.

When he saw that she was looking at him they fell apart with a nervous gesture.

They picked up the book she had laid down and turned it. His eyes examined the title page. Their pathos lightened and softened; it became compassion; they smiled at her with a little pitiful smile, half tender, half ironic, as if they said, "Poor Gwenda, is that what you're driven to?"

He opened the book and turned the pages, reading a little here and there.

He scowled. His look changed. It darkened. It was angry, resentful, inimical. The dying youth in it came a little nearer to death.

Rowcliffe had found that he could not understand what he had read.

"Huh! What do you addle your brains with that stuff for?" he said.

"It amuses me."

"Oh—so long as you're amused."

He pushed away the book that had offended him.

They talked—about the Vicar, about Alice, about Rowcliffe's children, about the changes in the Dale, the coming of the Maceys and the going of young Grierson.

"He wasn't a bad chap, Grierson."

He softened, remembering Grierson.

"I can't think why you didn't care about him."

And at the thought of how Gwenda might have cared for Grierson and hadn't cared his youth revived; it came back into his eyes and lit them; it passed into his scowling face and caressed and smoothed it to the perfect look of reminiscent satisfaction. Rowcliffe did not know, neither did she, how his egoism hung upon her passion, how it drew from it food and fire.

He raised his head and squared his shoulders with the unconscious gesture of his male pride.

* * * * *

It was then that she saw for the first time that he wore the black tie and had the black band of mourning on his sleeve.

"Oh Steven—what do you wear that for?"

"This? My poor old uncle died last week."

"Not the one I saw?"

"When?"

"At Mary's wedding."

"No. Another one. My father's brother."

He paused.

"It's made a great difference to me and Mary."

He said it gravely, mournfully almost. She looked at him with tender eyes.

"I'm sorry, Steven."

He smiled faintly.

"Sorry, are you?"

"Yes. If you cared for him."

"I'm afraid I didn't very much. It's not as if I'd seen a lot of him."

"You said it's made a difference."

"So it has. He's left me a good four hundred a year."

"Oh—that sort of difference."

"My dear girl, four hundred a year makes all the difference; it's no use pretending that it doesn't."

"I'm not pretending. You sounded sorry and I was sorry for you. That was all."

At that his egoism winced. It was as if she had accused him of pretending to be sorry.

He looked at her sharply. His romantic youth died in that look.

* * * * *

Silence fell between them. But she was used to that. She even welcomed it. Steven's silences brought him nearer to her than his speech.

Essy came in with the tea-tray.

He lingered uneasily after the meal, glancing now and then at the clock. She was used to that, too. She also had her eyes on the clock, measuring the priceless moments.

* * * * *

"Is anything worrying you, Steven?" she said presently.

"Why? Do I look worried?"

"Not exactly, but you don't look well."

"I'm getting a bit rusty. That's what's the matter with me. I want some hard work to rub me up and put a polish on me and I can't get it here. I've never had enough to do since I left Leeds. Harker was a wise chap to stick to it. It would do me all the good in the world if I went back."

"Then," she said, "you'll have to go, Steven."

She did not know, in her isolation, that Rowcliffe had been going about saying that sort of thing for the last seven years. She thought it was the formidable discovery of time.

"You ought to go if you feel like that about it. Why don't you?"

"I don't know."

"You do know."

She did not look at him as she spoke, so she missed his bewilderment.

"You know why you stayed, Steven."

He understood. He remembered. The dull red of his face flushed with the shock of the memory.

"Do I?" he said.

"I made you."

His flush darkened. But he gave no other sign of having heard her.

"I don't know why I'm staying now."

He rose and looked at his watch.

"I must be going home," he said.

He turned at the threshold.

"I forgot to give you Mary's message. She sent her love and she wants to know when you're coming again to see the babies."

"Oh—some day soon."

"You must make it very soon or they won't be babies any more. She's dying to show them to you."

"She showed them to me the other day."

"She says it's ages since you've been. And if she says it is she thinks it is."

Gwenda was silent.

"I'm coming all right, tell her."

"Well, but what day? We'd better fix it. Don't come on a Tuesday or a Friday, I'll be out."

"I must come when I can."



LX

She went on a Tuesday.

She had had tea with her father first. Meal-time had become sacred to the Vicar and he hated her to be away for any one of them.

She walked the four miles, going across the moor under Karva and loitering by the way, and it was past six before she reached Morfe.

She was shown into the room that was once Rowcliffe's study. It had been Mary's drawing-room ever since last year when the second child was born and they turned the big room over the dining-room into a day nursery. Mary had made it snug and gay with cushions and shining, florid chintzes. There were a great many things in rosewood and brass; a piano took the place of Rowcliffe's writing table; a bureau and a cabinet stood against the wall where his bookcases had been; and a tall palm-tree in a pot filled the little window that looked on to the orchard.

She had only to close her eyes and shut out these objects and she saw the room as it used to be. She closed them now and instantly she opened them again, for the vision hurt her.

She went restlessly about the room, picking up things and looking at them without seeing them.

In the room upstairs she heard the cries of Rowcliffe's children, bumping and the scampering of feet. She stood still then and clenched her hands. The pain at her heart was like no other pain. It was as if she hated Rowcliffe's children.

Presently she would have to go up and see them.

She waited. Mary was taking her own time.

Upstairs the doors opened and shut on the sharp grief of little children carried unwillingly to bed.

Gwenda's heart melted and grew tender at the sound. But its tenderness was more unbearable to her than its pain.

The maid-servant came to the door.

"Mrs. Rowcliffe says will you please go upstairs to the night nursery, Miss Gwenda. She can't leave the children."

That was the message Mary invariably sent. She left the children for hours together when other visitors were there. She could never leave them for a minute when her sister came. Unless Steven happened to be in. Then Mary would abandon whatever she was doing and hurry to the two. In the last year Gwenda had never found herself alone with Steven for ten minutes in his house. If Mary couldn't come at once she sent the nurse in with the children.

Upstairs in the night nursery Mary sat in the nurse's low chair. Her year-old baby sprawled naked in her lap. The elder infant stood whining under the nurse's hands.

Mary had changed a little in three and a half years. She was broader and stouter; the tender rose had hardened over her high cheek bones. Her face still kept its tranquil brooding, but her slow gray eyes had a secret tremor, they were almost alert, as if she were on the watch.

And Mary's mouth, with its wide, turned back lips, had lost its subtlety, it had coarsened slightly and loosened, under her senses' continual content.

Gwenda brushed Mary's mouth lightly with the winged arch of her upper lip. Mary laughed.

"You don't know how to kiss," she said. "If you're going to treat Baby that way, and Molly too—"

Gwenda stooped over the soft red down of the baby's head. To Gwenda it was as if her heart kept her hands off Rowcliffe's children, as if her flesh shrank from their flesh while her lips brushed theirs in tenderness and repulsion.

But seeing them was always worse in anticipation than reality.

For there was no trace of Rowcliffe in his children. The little red-haired, white-faced things were all Cartaret. Molly, the elder, had a look of Ally, sullen and sickly, as if some innermost reluctance had held back the impulse that had given it being. Even the younger child showed fragile as if implacable memory had come between it and perfect life.

Gwenda did not know why her fierceness was appeased by this unlikeness, nor why she wanted to see Mary and nothing but Mary in Rowcliffe's children, nor why she refused to think of them as his; she only knew that to see Rowcliffe in Mary's children would have been more than her flesh and blood could bear.

"You've come just in time to see Baby in her bath," said Mary.

"I seem to be always in time for that."

"Well, you're not in time to see Steven. He won't be home till nine at least."

"I didn't expect to see him. He told me he'd be out."

She saw the hidden watcher in Mary's eyes looking out at her.

"When did he tell you that?"

"Last Wednesday."

The watcher hid again, suddenly appeased.

Mary busied herself with the washing of her babies. She did it thoroughly and efficiently, with no sentimental tendernesses, but with soft, sensual pattings and strokings of the white, satin-smooth skins.

And when they were tucked into their cots and disposed of for the night Mary turned to Gwenda.

"Come into my room a minute," she said.

Mary's joy was to take her sister into her room and watch her to see if she would flinch before the signs of Steven's occupation. She drew her attention to these if Gwenda seemed likely to miss any of them.

"We've had the beds turned," she said. "The light hurt Steven's eyes. I can't say I like sleeping with my head out in the middle of the room."

"Why don't you lie the other way then?"

"My dear, Steven wouldn't like that. Oh, what a mess my hair's in!"

She turned to the glass and smoothed her disordered waves and coils, while she kept her eyes fixed on Gwenda's image there, appraising her clothes, her slenderness and straightness, the set of her head on her shoulders, the air that she kept up of almost insolent adolescence. She noted the delicate lines on her forehead and at the corners of her eyes; she saw that her small defiant face was still white and firm, and that her eyes looked violet blue with the dark shadows under them.

Time was the only power that had been good to Gwenda.

"She ought to look more battered," Mary thought. "She does carry it off well. And she's only two years younger than I am.

"It's her figure, really, not her face. She's got more lines than I have. But if I wore that long straight coat I should look awful in it."

"It's all very well for you," she said. "You haven't had two children."

"No. I haven't. But what's all very well?"

"The good looks you contrive to keep, my dear. Nobody would know you were thirty-three."

"I shouldn't, Molly, if you didn't remind me every time."

Mary flushed.

"You'll say next that's why you don't come."

"Why—I—don't come?"

"Yes. It's ages since you've been here."

That was always Mary's cry.

"I haven't much time, Molly, for coming on the off-chance."

"The off chance! As if I'd never asked you! You can go to Alice."

"Poor Ally wouldn't have anybody to show the baby to if I didn't. You haven't seen one of Ally's babies."

"I can't, Gwenda. I must think of the children. I can't let them grow up with little Greatorexes. There are three of them, aren't there?"

"Didn't you know there's been another?"

"Steven did tell me. She had rather a bad time, hadn't she?"

"She had. Molly—it wouldn't do you any harm now to go and see her. I think it's horrid of you not to. It's such rotten humbug. Why, you used to say I was ten times more awful than poor little Ally."

"There are moments, Gwenda, when I think you are."

"Moments? You always did think it. You think it still. And yet you'll have me here but you won't have her. Just because she's gone a technical howler and I haven't."

"You haven't. But you'd have gone a worse one if you'd had the chance."

Gwenda raised her head.

"You know, Molly, that that isn't true."

"I said if. I suppose you think you had your chance, then?"

"I don't think anything. Except that I've got to go."

"You haven't. You're going to stay for dinner now you're here."

"I can't, really, Mary."

But Mary was obstinate. Whether her sister stayed or went she made it hard for her. She kept it up on the stairs and at the door and at the garden gate.

"Perhaps you'll come some night when Steven's here. You know he's always glad to see you."

The sting of it was in Mary's watching eyes. For, when you came to think of it, there was nothing else she could very well have said.



LXI

That year, when spring warmed into summer, Gwenda's strength went from her.

She was always tired. She fought with her fatigue and got the better of it, but in a week or two it returned. Rowcliffe told her to rest and she rested, for a day or two, lying on the couch in the dining-room where Ally used to lie, and when she felt better she crawled out on to the moor and lay there.

One day she said to herself, "There's Ally. I'll go and see how she's getting on."

She dragged herself up the hill to Upthorne.

It was a day of heat and hidden sunlight. The moor and the marshes were drenched in the gray June mist. The hillside wore soft vapor like a cloak hiding its nakedness.

At the top of the Three Fields the nave of the old barn showed as if lifted up and withdrawn into the distance. But it was no longer solitary. The thorn-tree beside it had burst into white flower; it shimmered far-off under the mist in the dim green field, like a magic thing, half-hidden and about to disappear, remaining only for the hour of its enchantment.

It gave her the same subtle and mysterious joy that she had had on the night she and Rowcliffe walked together and saw the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge white under the hidden moon.

The gray Farm-house was changed, for Jim Greatorex had got on. He had built himself another granary on the north side of the mistal. He built it long and low, of hewn stone, with a corrugated iron roof. And he had made himself two fine new rooms, a dining-room and a nursery, one above the other, within the blind walls of the house where the old granary had been. The walls were blind no longer, for he had knocked four large windows out of them. And it was as if one-half of the house were awake and staring while the other half, in its old and alien beauty, dozed and dreamed under its scowling mullions.

As Gwenda came to it she wondered how the Farm could ever have seemed sinister and ghost-haunted; it had become so entirely the place of happy life.

Loud noises came from the open windows of the dining-room where the family were at tea; the barking of dogs, the competitive laughter of small children, a gurgling and crowing and spluttering; with now and then the sudden delicate laughter of Ally and the bellowing of Jim.

"Oh—there's Gwenda!" said Ally.

Jim stopped between a bellowing and a choking, for his mouth was full.

"Ay—it's 'er."

He washed down his mouthful. "Coom, Ally, and open door t' 'er."

But Ally did not come. She had her year-old baby on her knees and was feeding him.

At the door of the old kitchen Jim grasped his sister-in-law by the hand.

"Thot's right," he said. "Yo've joost coom in time for a cup o' tae. T' misses is in there wi' t' lil uns."

He jerked his thumb toward his dining-room and led the way there.

Jim was not quite so alert and slender as he had been. He had lost his savage grace. But he moved with his old directness and dignity, and he still looked at you with his pathetic, mystic gaze.

Ally was contrite; she raised her face to her sister to be kissed. "I can't get up," she said, "I'm feeding Baby. He'd howl if I left off."

"I'd let 'im howl. I'd spank him ef 'twas me," said Jim.

"He wouldn't, Gwenda."

"Ay, thot I would. An' 'e knows it, doos Johnny, t' yoong rascal."

Gwenda kissed the four children; Jimmy, and Gwendolen Alice, and little Steven and the baby John. They lifted little sticky faces and wiped them on Gwenda's face, and the happy din went on.

Ally didn't seem to mind it. She had grown plump and pink and rather like Mary without her subtlety. She sat smiling, tranquil among the cries of her offspring.

Jim turned three dogs out into the yard by way of discipline. He and Ally tried to talk to each other across the tumult that remained. Now and then Ally and the children talked to Gwenda. They told her that the black and white cow had calved, and that the blue lupins had come up in the garden, that the old sow had died, that Jenny, the chintz cat, had kittened and that the lop-eared rabbit had a litter.

"And Baby's got another tooth," said Ally.

"I'm breaakin' in t' yoong chestnut," said Jim. "Poor Daasy's gettin' paasst 'er work."

All these happenings were exciting and wonderful to Ally.

"But you're not interested, Gwenda."

"I am, darling, I am."

She was. Ally knew it but she wanted perpetual reassurance.

"But you never tell us anything."

"There's nothing to tell. Nothing happens."

"Oh, come," said Ally, "how's Papa?"

"Much the same except that he drove into Morfe yesterday to see Molly."

"Yes, darling, of course you may."

Ally was abstracted, for Gwenny had slipped from her chair and was whispering in her ear.

It never occurred to Ally to ask what Gwenda had been doing, or what she had been thinking of, or what she felt, or to listen to anything she had to say.

Her sister might just as well not have existed for all the interest Ally showed in her. She hadn't really forgotten what Gwenda had done for her, but she couldn't go on thinking about it forever. It was the sort of thing that wasn't easy or agreeable to think about and Ally's instinct of self-preservation urged her to turn from it. She tended to forget it, as she tended to forget all dreadful things, such as her own terrors and her father's illness and the noises Greatorex made when he was eating.

Gwenda was used to this apathy of Ally's and it had never hurt her till to-day. To-day she wanted something from Ally. She didn't know what it was exactly, but it was something Ally hadn't got.

She only said, "Have you seen the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge?"

And Ally never answered. She was heading off a stream of jam that was creeping down Stevey's chin to plunge into his neck.

"Gwenda's aasskin' yo 'ave yo seen t' thorn-trees on Greffington Edge," said Greatorex. He spoke to Ally as if she were deaf.

She made a desperate effort to detach herself from Stevey.

"The thorn-trees? Has anybody set fire to them?"

"Tha silly laass!——"

"What about the thorn-trees, Gwenda?"

"Only that they're all in flower," Gwenda said.

She didn't know where it had come from, the sudden impulse to tell Ally about the beauty of the thorn-trees.

But the impulse had gone. She thought sadly, "They want me. But they don't want me for myself. They don't want to talk to me. They don't know what to say. They don't know anything about me. They don't care—really. Jim likes me because I've stuck to Ally. Ally loves me because I would have given Steven to her. They love what I was, not what I am now, nor what I shall be.

"They have nothing for me."

It was Jim who answered her. "I knaw," he said, "I knaw."

"Oh! You little, little—lamb!"

Baby John had his fingers in his mother's hair.

* * * * *

Greatorex rose. "You'll not get mooch out o' Ally as long as t' kids are about. Yo'd best coom wi' mae into t' garden and see t' loopins."

She went with him.

He was silent as they threaded the garden path together. She thought, "I know why I like him."

They came to a standstill at the south wall where the tall blue lupins rose between them, vivid in the tender air and very still.

Greatorex also was still. His eyes looked away over the blue spires of the lupins to the naked hillside. They saw neither the hillside nor anything between.

When he spoke his voice was thick, almost as though he were in love or intoxicated.

"I knaw what yo mane about those thorn-trees. 'Tisn' no earthly beauty what yo see in 'em."

"Jim," she said, "shall I always see it?"

"I dawn—knaw. It cooms and it goas, doos sech-like."

"What makes it come?"

"What maakes it coom? Yo knaw better than I can tall yo."

"If I only did know. I'm afraid it's going."

"I can tell yo this for your coomfort. Ef yo soofer enoof mebbe it'll coom t' yo again. Ef yo're snoog and 'appy sure's death it'll goa."

He paused.

"It 'assn't coom t' mae sence I married Ally."

She was wrong about Jim. He had not forgotten her. He was not saying these things for himself; he was saying them for her, getting them out of himself with pain and difficulty. It was odd to think that nobody but she understood Jim, and that nobody but Jim had ever really understood her. Steven didn't understand her, any more than Ally understood her husband. And it made no difference to her, and it made no difference to Jim.

"I'll tell yo anoother quare thing. 'T' assn't got mooch t' do wi' good and baad. T' drink 'll nat drive it from yo, an' sin'll nat drive it from yo. Saw I raakon 't is mooch t' saame thing as t' graace o' Gawd."

"Did the grace of God go away from you when you married, Jim?"

"Mebbe t' would 'aave ef I'd roon aaffter it. 'Tis a tricky thing is Gawd's graace."

"But it's gone," she said. "You gave your soul for Ally when you married her."

He smiled. "I toald 'er I'd give my sawl t' marry 'er," he said.



LXII

As she went home she tried to recapture the magic of the flowering thorn-trees. But it had gone and she could not be persuaded that it would come again. She was still too young to draw joy from the memory of joy, and what Greatorex had told her seemed incredible.

She said to herself, "Is it going to be taken from me like everything else?"

And a dreadful duologue went on in her.

"It looks like it."

"But it was mine. It was mine like nothing else."

"It never had anything for you but what you gave it."

"Am I to go on giving the whole blessed time? Am I never to have anything for myself?"

"There never is anything for anybody but what they give. Or what they take from somebody else. You should have taken. You had your chance."

"I'd have died, rather."

"Do you call this living?"

"I have lived."

"He hasn't. Why did you sacrifice him?"

"For Mary."

"It wasn't for Mary. It was for yourself. For your own wretched soul."

"For his soul."

"How much do you suppose Mary cares about his soul? It would have had a chance with you. Its one chance."

The unconsoling voice had the last word. For it was not in answer to it that a certain phrase came into her brooding mind.

"I couldn't do a caddish thing like that."

It puzzled her. She had said it to Steven that night. But it came to her now attached to an older memory. Somebody had said it to her before then. Years before.

She remembered. It was Ally.



LXIII

A year passed. It was June again.

For more than a year there had been rumors of changes in Morfe. The doctor talked of going. He was always talking of going and nobody had yet believed that he would go. This time, they said, he was serious, it had been a toss-up whether he stayed or went. But in the end he stayed. Things had happened in Rowcliffe's family. His mother had died and his wife had had a son.

Rowcliffe's son was the image of Rowcliffe.

The doctor had no brothers or sisters, and by his mother's death he came into possession both of his father's income and of hers. He had now more than a thousand a year over and above what he earned.

On an unearned thousand a year you can live like a rich man in Rathdale.

Not that Rowcliffe had any idea of giving up. He was well under forty and as soon as old Hyslop at Reyburn died or retired he would step into his practice. He hadn't half enough to do in Morfe and he wanted more.

Meanwhile he had bought the house that joined on to his own and thrown the two and their gardens into one. They had been one twenty years ago, when the wide-fronted building, with its long rows of windows, was the dominating house in Morfe village. Rowcliffe was now the dominating man in it. He had given the old place back its own.

And he had spent any amount of money on it. He had had all the woodwork painted white, and the whole house repapered and redecorated. He had laid down parquet flooring in the big square hall that he had made and in the new drawing-room upstairs; and he had bought a great deal of beautiful and expensive furniture.

And now he was building a garage and laying out a croquet ground and tennis lawns at the back.

He and Mary had been superintending these works all afternoon till a shower sent them indoors. And now they were sitting together in the drawing-room, in the breathing-space that came between the children's hour and dinner.

Mary had sent the children back to the nursery a little earlier than usual. Rowcliffe had complained of headache.

He was always complaining of headaches. They dated from his marriage, and more particularly from one night in June eight years ago.

But Rowcliffe ignored the evidence of dates. He ignored everything that made him feel uncomfortable. He had put Gwenda from him. He had said plainly to Mary (in one poignant moment not long before the birth of their third child), "If you're worrying about me and Gwenda, you needn't. She was never anything to me."

That was not saying there had never been anything between them, but Mary knew what he had meant.

He said to himself, and Mary said that he had got over it. But he hadn't got over it. He might say to himself and Mary, "She was never anything to me"; he might put her and the thought of her away from him, but she had left her mark on him. He hadn't put her away. She was there, in his heavy eyes and in the irritable gestures of his hands, in his nerves and in his wounded memory. She had knitted herself into his secret being.

Mary was unaware of the cause of his malady. If it had been suggested to her that he had got into this state because of Gwenda she would have dismissed the idea with contempt. She didn't worry about Rowcliffe's state. On the contrary, Rowcliffe's state was a consolation and a satisfaction to her for all that she had endured through Gwenda. She would have thought you mad if you had told her so, for she was sorry for Steven and tender to him when he was nervous or depressed. But to Mary her sorrow and her tenderness were a voluptuous joy. She even encouraged Rowcliffe in his state. She liked to make it out worse than it really was, so that he might be more dependent on her.

And she had found that it could be induced in him by suggestion. She had only to say to him, "Steven, you're thoroughly worn out," and he was thoroughly worn out. She had more pleasure, because she had more confidence, in this lethargic, middle-aged Rowcliffe than in Rowcliffe young and energetic. His youth had attracted him to Gwenda and his energy had driven him out of doors. And Mary had set herself, secretly, insidiously, to destroy them.

It had taken her seven years.

For the first five years it had been hard work for Mary. It had meant, for her body, an ignominious waiting and watching for the moment when its appeal would be irresistible, for her soul a complete subservience to her husband's moods, and for her mind perpetual attention to his comfort, a thousand cares that had seemed to go unnoticed. But in the sixth year they had begun to tell. Once Rowcliffe had made up his mind that Gwenda couldn't be anything to him he had let go and through sheer exhaustion had fallen more and more into his wife's hands, and for the last two years her labor had been easy and its end sure.

She had him, bound to her bed and to her fireside.

He said and thought that he was happy. He meant that he was extremely comfortable.

* * * * *

"Is your head very bad, Steven?"

He shook his head. It wasn't very bad, but he was worried. He was worried about himself.

From time to time his old self rose against this new self that was the slave of comfort. It made desperate efforts to shake off the strangling lethargy. When he went about saying that he was getting rusty, that he ought never to have left Leeds, and that it would do him all the good in the world to go back there, he was saying what he knew to be the truth. The life he was leading was playing the devil with his nerves and brain. His brain had nothing to do. Hard work might not be the cure for every kind of nervous trouble, but it was the one cure for the kind that he had got.

He ought to have gone away seven years ago. It was Gwenda's fault that he hadn't gone. He felt a dull anger against her as against a woman who had wrecked his chance.

He had a chance of going now if he cared to take it.

He had had a letter that morning from Dr. Harker asking if he had meant what he had said a year ago, and if he'd care to exchange his Rathdale practice for his old practice in Leeds. Harker's wife was threatened with lung trouble, and they would have to live in the country somewhere, and Harker himself wouldn't be sorry for the exchange. His present practice was worth twice what it had been ten years ago and it was growing. There were all sorts of interesting things to be done in Leeds by a man of Rowcliffe's keenness and energy.

"Do you know, Steven, you're getting quite stout?"

"I do know," he said almost with bitterness.

"I don't mean horridly stout, dear, just nicely and comfortably stout."

"I'm too comfortable," he said. "I don't do enough work to keep me fit."

"Is that what's bothering you?"

He frowned. It was Harker's letter that was bothering him. He said so.

For one instant Mary looked impatient.

"I thought we'd settled that," she said.

Rowcliffe sighed.

"What on earth makes you want to go and leave this place when you've spent hundreds on it?"

"I should make pots of money in Leeds."

"But we couldn't live there."

"Why not?"

"It would be too awful. My dear, if it were a big London practice I shouldn't say no. That might be worth while. But whatever should we have in Leeds?"

"We haven't much here."

"We've got the county. You might think of the children."

"I do," he said mournfully. "I do. I think of nothing else but the children—and you. If you wouldn't like it there's an end of it."

"You might think of yourself, dear. You really are not strong enough for it."

He felt that he really was not.

He changed the subject.

"I saw Gwenda the other day."

"Looking as young as ever, I suppose?"

"No. Not quite so young. I thought she was looking rather ill."

He meditated.

"I wonder why she never comes."

He really did wonder.

* * * * *

"It's a quarter past seven, Steven."

He rose and stretched himself. They went together to the night nursery where the three children lay in their cots, the little red-haired girls awake and restless, and the dark-haired baby in his first sleep. They bent over them together. Mary's lips touched the red hair and the dark where Steven's lips had been.

They spent the evening sitting by the fire in Rowcliffe's study. The doctor dozed. Mary, silent over her sewing, was the perfect image of tranquillity. From time to time she looked at her husband and smiled as his chin dropped to his breast and recovered itself with a start.

At the stroke of ten she murmured, "Steven, are you ready for bed?"

He rose, stumbling for drowsiness.

As they passed into the square hall he paused and looked round him before putting out the lights.

"Yes" (he yawned). "Ye-hes. I think we shall do very comfortably here for the next seven years."

He was thinking of old Hyslop. He had given him seven years.



LXIV

The next day (it was a Friday), when Mary came home to tea after a round of ineffectual calling she was told that Miss Gwenda was in the drawing-room.

Mary inquired whether the doctor was in.

Dr. Rowcliffe was in but he was engaged in the surgery.

Mary thought she knew why Gwenda had come to-day.

For the last two or three Wednesdays Rowcliffe had left Garthdale without calling at the Vicarage.

He had not meant to break his habit, but it happened so. For, this year, Mary had decided to have a day, from May to October. And her day was Wednesday.

Her sister had ignored her day, and Mary was offended.

She had every reason. Mary believed in keeping up appearances, and the appearance she most desired to keep up was that of behaving beautifully to her sister. This required her sister's co-operation. It couldn't appear if Gwenda didn't. And Gwenda hadn't given it a chance. She meant to have it out with her.

She greeted her therefore with a certain challenge.

"What are you keeping away for? Do you suppose we aren't glad to see you?"

"I'm not keeping away," said Gwenda.

"It looks uncommonly like it. Do you know it's two months since you've been here?"

"Is it? I've lost count."

"I should think you did lose count!"

"I'm sorry, Molly. I couldn't come."

"You talk as if you had engagements every day in Garthdale."

"If it comes to that, it's months since you've been to us."

"It's different for me. I have engagements. And I've my husband and children too. Steven hates it if I'm out when he comes home."

"And Papa hates it if I'm out."

"It's no use minding what Papa hates. What's making you so sensitive?"

"Living with him."

"Then for goodness sake get away from him when you can. One afternoon here can't matter to him."

Gwenda said nothing, neither did she look at her. But she answered her in her heart. "It matters to me. It matters to me. How stupid you are if you don't see how it matters. Yet I'd die rather than you should see."

Mary went on, exasperated by her sister's silence.

"We may as well have it out while we're about it. Why can't you look me straight in the face and say plump out what I've done?"

"You've done nothing."

"Well, is it Steven, then? Has he done anything?"

"Of course he hasn't. What could he do?"

"Poor Steven, goodness knows! I'm sure I don't. No more does he. Unless——"

She stopped. Her sister was looking her straight in the face now.

"Unless what?"

"My dear Gwenda, don't glare at me like that. I'm not saying things and I'm not thinking them. I don't know what you're thinking. If you weren't so nervy you'd own that I've always been decent to you. I'm sure I have been. I've always stood up for you. I've always wanted to have you here——"

"And why shouldn't you?"

Mary blinked. She had seen her blunder.

"I never said you weren't decent to me, Molly."

"You behave as if I weren't."

"How am I to behave?"

"I know it's difficult," said Mary. The memory of her blunder rankled.

"Are you offended because Steven hasn't been to see you?"

"My dear Molly——"

Mary ignored her look of weary tolerance.

"Because you can't expect him to keep on running up to Garthdale when Papa's all right."

"I don't expect him."

"Well then——!" said Mary with the air of having exhausted all plausible interpretations.

"If I were offended," said Gwenda, "should I be here?"

The appearance of the tea-tray and the parlormaid absolved Mary from the embarrassing compulsion to reply. She addressed herself to the parlormaid.

"Tell Dr. Rowcliffe that tea is ready and that Miss Gwendolen is here."

She really wanted Steven to come and deliver her from the situation she had created. But Rowcliffe delayed his coming.

"Is it true that Steven's going to give up his practice?" Gwenda said presently.

"Well no—whatever he does he won't do that," said Mary.

She thought, "So that's what she came for. Steven hasn't told her anything."

"What put that idea into your head?" she asked.

"Somebody told me so."

"He has had an offer of Dr. Harker's practice in Leeds, and he'd some idea of taking it. He seemed to think it might be a good thing."

There was a flicker in the whiteness of Gwenda's face. It arrested Mary.

It was not excitement nor dismay nor eagerness, nor even interest. It was a sort of illumination, the movement of some inner light, the shining passage of some idea. And in Gwenda's attitude, as it now presented itself to Mary, there was a curious still withdrawal and detachment. She seemed hardly to listen but to be preoccupied with her idea.

"He thought it would be a good thing," she said.

"I think I've convinced him," said Mary, "that it wouldn't."

Gwenda was stiller and more withdrawn than ever, guarding her idea.

"Can I see Steven before I go?" she said presently.

"Of course. He'll be up in a second——"

"I can't—here."

Mary stared. She understood.

"You're ill. Poor dear, you shall see him this minute."

She rang the bell.



LXV

Five minutes passed before Rowcliffe came to Gwenda in the study.

"Forgive me," he said. "I had a troublesome patient."

"Don't be afraid. You're not going to have another."

"Come, you haven't troubled me much, anyhow. This is the first time, isn't it?"

Yes, she thought, it was the first time. And it would be the last. There had not been many ways of seeing Steven, but this way had always been open to her if she had cared to take it. But it had been of all ways the most repugnant to her, and she had never taken it till now when she was driven to it.

"Mary tells me you're not feeling very fit."

He was utterly gentle, as he was with all sick and suffering things.

"I'm all right. That's not why I want to see you."

He was faintly surprised. "What is it, then? Sit down and tell me."

She sat down. They had Steven's table as a barrier between them.

"You've been thinking of leaving Rathdale, haven't you?" she said.

"I've been thinking of leaving it for the last seven years. But I haven't left it yet. I don't suppose I shall leave it now."

"Even when you've got the chance?"

"Even when I've got the chance."

"You said you wanted to go, and you do, don't you?"

"Well, yes—for some things."

"Would you think me an awful brute if I said I wanted you to go?"

He gave her a little queer, puzzled look.

"I wouldn't think you a brute whatever you wanted. Do you mind my smoking a cigarette?"

"No."

She waited.

"Steven—

"I wish I hadn't made you stay."

"You're not making me stay."

"I mean—that time. Do you remember?"

He smiled a little smile of reminiscent tenderness.

"Yes, yes. I remember."

"I didn't understand, Steven."

"Well, well. There's no need to go back on that now. It's done, Gwenda."

"Yes. And I did it. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what it meant. I didn't think it would have been like this."

"Like what?"

Rowcliffe's smile that had been reminiscent was now vague and obscurely speculative.

"I ought to have let you go when you wanted to," she said.

Rowcliffe looked down at the table. She sat leaning sideways against it; one thin arm was stretched out on it. The hand gripped the paper weight that he had pushed away. It was this hand, so tense and yet so helpless, that he was looking at. He laid his own over it gently. Its grip slackened then. It lay lax under the sheltering hand.

"Don't worry about that, my dear," he said. "It's been all right——"

"It hasn't. It hasn't."

Rowcliffe's nerves winced before her fierce intensity. He withdrew his sheltering hand.

"Just at first," she said, "it was all right. But you see—it's broken down. You said it would."

"You mustn't keep on bothering about what I said."

"It isn't what you said. It's what is. It's this place. We're all tied up together in it, tight. We can't get away from each other. It isn't as if I could leave. I'm stuck here with Papa."

"My dear Gwenda, did I ever say you ought to leave?"

"No. You said you ought. It's the same thing."

"It isn't. And I don't say it now. What is the earthly use of going back on things? That's what makes you ill. Put it straight out of your mind. You know I can't help you if you go on like this."

"You can."

"My dear, I wish I knew how. You asked me to stay and I stayed. I can understand that."

"If I asked you to go, would you go, Steven? Would you understand that too?"

"My dear child, what good would that do you?"

"I want you to go, Steven."

"You want me to go?"

He screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to see the thing clearly.

"Yes," she said.

He shook his head. He had given it up.

"No, my dear, you don't want me to go. You only think you do. You don't know what you want."

"I shouldn't say it if I didn't."

"Wouldn't you! It's exactly what you would say. Do you suppose I don't know you?"

She had both her arms stretched before him on the table now. The hands were clasped. The little thin hands implored him. Her eyes implored him. In the tense clasp and in the gaze there was the passion of entreaty that she kept out of her voice.

But Rowcliffe did not see it. He had shifted his position, sinking a little lower into his chair, and his head was bowed before her. His eyes, somberly reflective, looked straight in front of him under their bent brows.

He seemed to be really considering whether he would go or stay.

"No," he said presently. "No, I'm not going."

But he was dubious and deliberate. It was as if he still weighed it, still watched for the turning of the scale.

The clock across the market-place struck eight. He gathered himself together. And it was then as if the strokes, falling on his ear, set free some blocked movement in his brain.

"No," he said, "I don't see how I can go, as things are. Besides—it isn't necessary."

"I see," she said.

* * * * *

She rose. She gave him a long look. A look that was still incredulous of what it saw.

His eyes refused to meet it as he rose also.

They stood so for a moment without any speech but that of eyes lifted and eyes lowered.

Still without a word, she turned from him to the door.

He sprang to open it.

* * * * *

Five minutes later he was aware that his wife had come into the room.

"Has Gwenda gone?" he said.

"Yes. Steven——" There was a small, fluttering fright in Mary's eyes. "Is there anything the matter with her?"

"No," he said. "Nothing. Except living with your father."



LXVI

Gwenda had no feeling in her as she left Rowcliffe's house. Her heart hid in her breast. It was so mortally wounded as to be unaware that it was hurt.

But at the turn of the white road her heart stirred in its hiding-place. It stirred at the sight of Karva and with the wind that brought her the smell of the flowering thorn-trees.

It discerned in these things a power that would before long make her suffer.

She had no other sense of them.

* * * * *

She came to the drop of the road under Karva where she had seen Rowcliffe for the first time.

She thought, "I shall never get away from it."

Far off in the bottom the village waited for her.

It had always waited for her; but she was afraid of it now, afraid of what it might have in store for her. It shared her fear as it crouched there, like a beaten thing, with its huddled houses, naked and blackened as if fire had passed over them.

And Essy Gale stood at the Vicarage gate and waited. She had her child at her side. The two were looking for Gwenda.

"I thought mebbe something had 'appened t' yo," she said.

As if she had seen what had happened to her she hurried the child in out of her sight.

Ten minutes to ten.

In the small dull room Gwenda waited for the hour of her deliverance. She had taken up her sewing and her book.

The Vicar sat silent, waiting, he too, with his hands folded on his lap.

And, loud through the quiet house, she heard the sound of crying and Essy's voice scolding her little son, avenging on him the cruelty of life.

On Greffington Edge, under the risen moon, the white thorn-trees flowered in their glory.

THE END.



The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the same author, and new fiction.



By THE SAME AUTHOR

The Return of the Prodigal

Cloth, 12mo. $1.35 net.

"These are stories to be read leisurely with a feeling for the stylish and the careful workmanship which is always a part of May Sinclair's work. They need no recommendation to those who know the author's work and one of the things on which we may congratulate ourselves is the fact that so many Americans are her reading friends."—Kansas City Gazette-Globe.

"They are the product of a master workman who has both skill and art, and who scorns to produce less than the best."—Buffalo Express.

"Always a clever writer, Miss Sinclair at her best is an exceptionally interesting one, and in several of the tales bound together in this new volume we have her at her best."—N.Y. Times.

"... All of which show the same sensitive apprehension of unusual cases and delicate relations, and reveal a truth which would be hidden from the hasty or blunt observer."—Boston Transcript.

"One of the best of the many collections of stories published this season."—N.Y. Sun.

"... All these stories are of deep interest because all of them are out of the rut."—Kentucky Post.

"Let no one who cares for good and sincere work neglect this book."—London Post.

"The stories are touched with a peculiar delicacy and whimsicality."—Los Angeles Times.

* * * * *

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The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman

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The name of H.G. Wells upon a title page is an assurance of merit. It is a guarantee that on the pages which follow will be found an absorbing story told with master skill. In the present book Mr. Wells surpasses even his previous efforts. He is writing of modern society life, particularly of one very charming young woman, Lady Harman, who finds herself so bound in by conventions, so hampered by restrictions, largely those of a well intentioned but short sighted husband, that she is ultimately moved to revolt. The real meaning of this revolt, its effect upon her life and those of her associates are narrated by one who goes beneath the surface in his analysis of human motives. In the group of characters, writers, suffragists, labor organizers, social workers and society lights surrounding Lady Harman, and in the dramatic incidents which compose the years of her existence which are described by Mr. Wells, there is a novel which is significant in its interpretation of the trend of affairs today, and fascinatingly interesting as fiction. It is Mr. Wells at his best.

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Thracian Sea

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Probably no author to-day has written more powerfully or frankly on the conventions of modern society than John Helston, who, however, has hitherto confined himself to the medium of verse. In this novel, the theme of which occasionally touches upon the same problems—problems involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one's life in one's own way—he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose form than of the poetical. While the book is one for mature minds, the skill with which delicate situations are handled and the reserve everywhere exhibited remove it from possible criticism even by the most exacting. The title, it should be explained, refers to a spirited race horse with the fortunes of which the lives of two of the leading characters are bound up.



Faces in the Dawn

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A great many people already know Mr. Hagedorn through his verse. Faces in the Dawn will, however, be their introduction to him as a novelist. The same qualities that have served to raise his poetry above the common level help to distinguish this story of a German village. The theme of the book is the transformation that was wrought in the lives of an irritable, domineering German pastor and his wife through the influence of a young German girl and her American lover. Sentiment, humor and a human feeling, all present in just the right measure, warm the heart and contribute to the enjoyment which the reader derives in following the experiences of the well drawn characters.

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Everyone who remembers The Sea Wolf with pleasure will enjoy this vigorous narrative of a voyage from New York around Cape Horn in a large sailing vessel. The Mutiny of the Elsinore is the same kind of tale as its famous predecessor, and by those who have read it, it is pronounced even more stirring. Mr. London is here writing of scenes and types of people with which he is very familiar, the sea and ships and those who live in ships. In addition to the adventure element, of which there is an abundance of the usual London kind, a most satisfying kind it is, too, there is a thread of romance involving a wealthy, tired young man who takes the trip on the Elsinore, and the captain's daughter. The play of incident, on the one hand the ship's amazing crew and on the other the lovers, gives a story in which the interest never lags and which demonstrates anew what a master of his art Mr. London is.

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With frontispiece in colors, by F. Graham Cootes.

Decorated cloth, 12mo. $1.50 net.

"Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child must work for her living."

The title of Mrs. Norris's new novel at once indicates its theme. It is the life story of a girl who has her own way to make in the world. The various experiences through which she passes, the various viewpoints which she holds until she comes finally to realize that service for others is the only thing that counts, are told with that same intimate knowledge of character, that healthy optimism and the belief in the ultimate goodness of mankind that have distinguished all of this author's writing. The book is intensely alive with human emotions. The reader is bound to sympathize with Mrs. Norris's people because they seem like real people and because they are actuated by motives which one is able to understand. Saturday's Child is Mrs. Norris's longest work. Into it has gone the very best of her creative talent. It is a volume which the many admirers of Mother will gladly accept.

Neighborhood Stories

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THE END