s
and fancies beset her till she was trembling all over.

"What is it?" she said at last. "You haven't--you haven't stopped loving
me, Derek?"

"No one could stop loving you."

"What is it, then? Are you thinking of poor Tryst?"

With a catch in his throat and a sort of choked laugh he answered:

"Yes."

"But it's all over. He's at peace."

"Peace!" Then, in a queer, dead voice, he added: "I'm sorry, Nedda.
It's beastly for you. But I can't help it."

What couldn't he help? Why did he keep her suffering like this--not
telling her? What was this something that seemed so terribly between
them? She walked on silently at his side, conscious of the rustling of
the sycamores, of the moonlit angle of the church magnate's house, of the
silence in the lane, and the gliding of their own shadows along the wall.
What was this in his face, his thoughts, that she could not reach! And
she cried out:

"Tell me! Oh, tell me, Derek! I can go through anything with you!"

"I can't get rid of him, that's all. I thought he'd go when I'd seen him
there. But it's no good!"

Terror got hold of her then. She peered at his face--very white and
haggard. There seemed no blood in it. They were going downhill now,
along the blank wall of a factory; there was the river in front, with the
moonlight on it and boats drawn up along the bank. From a chimney a
scroll of black smoke was flung out across the sky, and a lighted bridge
glowed above the water. They turned away from that, passing below the
dark pile of the cathedral. Here couples still lingered on benches along
the river-bank, happy in the warm night, under the August moon! And on
and on they walked in that strange, miserable silence, past all those
benches and couples, out on the river-path by the fields, where the scent
of hay-stacks, and the freshness from the early stubbles and the grasses
webbed with dew, overpowered the faint reek of the river mud. And still
on and on in the moonlight that haunted through the willows. At their
footsteps the water-rats scuttled down into the water with tiny splashes;
a dog barked somewhere a long way off; a train whistled; a frog croaked.
From the stubbles and second crops of sun-baked clover puffs of warm air
kept stealing up into the chillier air beneath the willows. Such moonlit
nights never seem to sleep. And there was a kind of triumph in the
night's smile, as though it knew that it ruled the river and the fields,
ru