ok from their box Martin's letters and
the ring with the three pearls, and the tattered programme. She sat on
her bed and turned them over and over. She was bewildered and scarcely
knew where she was. She repeated again and again: "I must go away at
once ... I must go away at once."

Then as though moved by some compelling force that she did not
recognise she fell on her knees beside the bed, crying: "Martin,
Martin, I want you. I don't know where you are but I must find you.
Martin, tell me where you are. I'll go to you anywhere. Martin, where
are you? Where are you?"

It may not have been a vocal cry; perhaps she made no sound, but she
waited, there on her knees, hearing very clearly the bells ringing for
evening service and seeing the evening sun steal across her carpet and
touch gently, the pictures on the wall. Gradually as she knelt there,
calm and reassurance came back to her. She felt as though he, somewhere
lost in the world, had heard her. She laid her cheek upon the quilt of
the bed and, for the first time since Uncle Mathew's death, her
thoughts worked in connected order, her courage returned to her, and
she saw the room and the sun and the trees beyond the window as real
objects, without the mist of terror and despair that had hitherto
surrounded her.

She rose from her knees as though she were withdrawing from a horrible
nightmare. She could remember nothing of the events of the last week
save her talk with Paul that afternoon. She could recall nothing of the
inquest, nor whether she had been to Church, nor any scene with Grace.

"So long as I'm alive and Martin's alive it's all right," she thought.
She knew that he was alive. She would find him. She put away the things
into the box again; she had not yet thought what she would do, but, in
some way, she had received during those few minutes in her room a
reassurance that she was not alone.

She went out into the spring dusk. She chose the road towards Barnham
Wood because it was lonely there and the hedges were thin; you could
feel the breath of the sea as it blew across the sparse fields. The
hush of an English Sunday evening enfolded the road, the wood, the
fields. The sun was very low and the saffron light penetrated the dark
lines of the hedges and hung like a curtain of misty gold before the
approaches to the wood. The red-brown fields rolled to the horizon and
lay, like a carpet, at the foot of the town huddled against the pale
sky.

She was