agged the horse's mouth. There darted
into his mind Gyp's word: "Cruel!" And, viciously, in one of those queer
nerve-crises that beset us all, he struck the pulling horse.

They were cantering toward the corner where the fields joined, and
suddenly he was aware that he could no more hold the beast than if a
steam-engine had been under him. Straight at the linhay Hotspur dashed,
and Summerhay thought: "My God! He'll kill himself!" Straight at the old
stone linhay, covered by the great ivy bush. Right at it--into it!
Summerhay ducked his head. Not low enough--the ivy concealed a beam! A
sickening crash! Torn backward out of the saddle, he fell on his back in
a pool of leaves and mud. And the horse, slithering round the linhay
walls, checked in his own length, unhurt, snorting, frightened, came out,
turning his wild eyes on his master, who never stirred, then trotted back
into the field, throwing up his head.

X

When, at her words, Summerhay went out of the room, Gyp's heart sank.
All the morning she had tried so hard to keep back her despairing
jealousy, and now at the first reminder had broken down again. It was
beyond her strength! To live day after day knowing that he, up in
London, was either seeing that girl or painfully abstaining from seeing
her! And then, when he returned, to be to him just what she had been, to
show nothing--would it ever be possible? Hardest to bear was what seemed
to her the falsity of his words, maintaining that he still really loved
her. If he did, how could he hesitate one second? Would not the very
thought of the girl be abhorrent to him? He would have shown that, not
merely said it among other wild things. Words were no use when they
contradicted action. She, who loved with every bit of her, could not
grasp that a man can really love and want one woman and yet, at the same
time, be attracted by another.

That sudden fearful impulse of the morning to make away with herself and
end it for them both recurred so vaguely that it hardly counted in her
struggles; the conflict centred now round the question whether life would
be less utterly miserable if she withdrew from him and went back to
Mildenham. Life without him? That was impossible! Life with him? Just
as impossible, it seemed! There comes a point of mental anguish when the
alternatives between which one swings, equally hopeless, become each so
monstrous that the mind does not really work at all, but rushes