e him, and betrayed her
heart. That would have been the one unbearable thing to have been left
remembering! She stood long looking down, as if trying to see the future
in her dim flower-beds; then, bracing herself, hurried to the house. No
one was on the veranda, no one in the drawing-room. She looked at the
clock. Nearly eleven. Ringing for the servant to shut the windows, she
stole up to her room. Had her husband gone away as he had come? Or would
she presently again be face to face with that dread, the nerve of which
never stopped aching now, dread of the night when he was near? She
determined not to go to bed, and drawing a long chair to the window,
wrapped herself in a gown, and lay back.

The flower from her dress, miraculously uncrushed in those dark minutes
on the grass, she set in water beside her at the window--Mark's
favourite flower, he had once told her; it was a comfort, with its scent,
and hue, and memory of him.

Strange that in her life, with all the faces seen, and people known, she
had not loved one till she had met Lennan! She had even been sure that
love would never come to her; had not wanted it--very much; had thought
to go on well enough, and pass out at the end, never having known, or
much cared to know, full summer. Love had taken its revenge on her now
for all slighted love offered her in the past; for the one hated love
that had to-night been on its knees to her. They said it must always
come once to every man and woman--this witchery, this dark sweet feeling,
springing up, who knew how or why? She had not believed, but now she
knew. And whatever might be coming, she would not have this different.
Since all things changed, she must change and get old and be no longer
pretty for him to look at, but this in her heart could not change. She
felt sure of that. It was as if something said: This is for ever, beyond
life, beyond death, this is for ever! He will be dust, and you dust, but
your love will live! Somewhere--in the woods, among the flowers, or down
in the dark water, it will haunt! For it only you have lived! . . . Then
she noticed that a slender silvery-winged thing, unlike any moth she had
ever seen, had settled on her gown, close to her neck. It seemed to be
sleeping, so delicate and drowsy, having come in from the breathless
dark, thinking, perhaps, that her whiteness was a light. What dim memory
did it rouse; something of HIM, something HE had done--in darkness, on a