here were
other people in the carriage, business men from the city, lawyers, from
that--place where she had been. And she was glad of their company, glad
of the crackle of evening papers and stolid faces giving her looks of
stolid interest from behind them, glad to have to keep her mask on,
afraid of the violence of her emotion. But one by one they got out, to
their cars or their constitutionals, and she was left alone to gaze at
darkness and the deserted river just visible in the light of a moon
smothered behind the sou'westerly sky. And for one wild moment she
thought: 'Shall I open the door and step out--one step--peace!'

She hurried away from the station. It was raining, and she drew up her
veil to feel its freshness on her hot face. There was just light enough
for her to see the pathway through the beech clump. The wind in there was
sighing, soughing, driving the dark boughs, tearing off the leaves,
little black wet shapes that came whirling at her face. The wild
melancholy in that swaying wood was too much for Gyp; she ran, thrusting
her feet through the deep rustling drifts of leaves not yet quite
drenched. They clung all wet round her thin stockings, and the rainy
wind beat her forehead. At the edge, she paused for breath, leaning
against the bole of a beech, peering back, where the wild whirling wind
was moaning and tearing off the leaves. Then, bending her head to the
rain, she went on in the open, trying to prepare herself to show nothing
when she reached home.

She got in and upstairs to her room, without being seen. If she had
possessed any sedative drug she would have taken it. Anything to secure
oblivion from this aching misery! Huddling before the freshly lighted
fire, she listened to the wind driving through the poplars; and once more
there came back to her the words of that song sung by the Scottish girl
at Fiorsen's concert:

"And my heart reft of its own sun,
Deep lies in death-torpor cold and grey."

Presently she crept into bed, and at last fell asleep.

She woke next morning with the joyful thought: 'It's Saturday; he'll be
down soon after lunch!' And then she remembered. Ah, no! It was too
much! At the pang of that remembrance, it was as if a devil entered into
her--a devil of stubborn pride, which grew blacker with every hour of
that morning. After lunch, that she might not be in when he came, she
ordered her mare, and rode up on the downs alone. The rain had ce