d you. We're different generations, that's what it really
is.

"But over Roddy we _can_ meet. I didn't love him when I married him, but
I do now, and we're going to have a child.... That will make us both
very happy, I expect. You love Roddy and I love him. You needn't be
afraid that I'll harm his memory of you."

Her voice was trembling and she was very near to tears. She would have
liked to have said something that would have offered some terms of peace
between them, something upon which, afterwards, she might look back with
comfort. For her that hostility seemed, in the face of death, so small
and poor a thing.

But no words would come.

Her grandmother, in a voice that was very weak, said:

"Thank you, Rachel; that's a great relief to me. That's good of
you ... and now, my dear, I think Christopher would say that I'd talked
enough. Good night."

Rachel knew that this was their last meeting, that here was the absolute
conclusion of all the years of warfare that there had been between them.

There was nothing to say.... She bent down and kissed the dry cheek,
waited for an instant, but there was no movement.

"Good night, grandmamma," she said. "I hope that you'll be better
to-morrow," then softly stole away.

III

The Duchess lay very still, watching the shadows as they crept across
the fields. They were evening shadows now, for the sky, pink like the
inside of a shell, had no clouds upon its surface.

She would not get up again; this evening should be the last to see her
gaze upon the world. It was too fatiguing and all energy had flowed from
her, leaving her without desire, without passion, without regret, without
fear. Very dreamily and at a great distance figures and scenes from her
past life hovered, halted, and passed. But she was not interested, she
had forgotten their purpose and meaning, she did not want to think any
more.

The splashing of the fountain was phantasmal and very far away.

The long black shadow crept up the field. She watched it. At the top of
the red ridge of field, against the sky-line, very sharp and clear, was
a gate, golden now in the sun. When the shadow caught it she would go to
bed ... and she would never get up again.

She waited lazily, indifferently. The gate was caught; the last gleams
of the sun had left the orchard and the evening star glittered in a sky
very faintly green.

She touched a bell at her side and Dorchester appeared.

"I'll go to bed, Dorcheste