of her voice.

But Rowcliffe did not see it. He had shifted his position, sinking a
little lower into his chair, and his head was bowed before her. His
eyes, somberly reflective, looked straight in front of him under their
bent brows.

He seemed to be really considering whether he would go or stay.

"No," he said presently. "No, I'm not going."

But he was dubious and deliberate. It was as if he still weighed it,
still watched for the turning of the scale.

The clock across the market-place struck eight. He gathered himself
together. And it was then as if the strokes, falling on his ear, set
free some blocked movement in his brain.

"No," he said, "I don't see how I can go, as things are. Besides--it
isn't necessary."

"I see," she said.

* * * * *

She rose. She gave him a long look. A look that was still incredulous
of what it saw.

His eyes refused to meet it as he rose also.

They stood so for a moment without any speech but that of eyes lifted
and eyes lowered.

Still without a word, she turned from him to the door.

He sprang to open it.

* * * * *

Five minutes later he was aware that his wife had come into the room.

"Has Gwenda gone?" he said.

"Yes. Steven----" There was a small, fluttering fright in Mary's eyes.
"Is there anything the matter with her?"

"No," he said. "Nothing. Except living with your father."

LXVI

Gwenda had no feeling in her as she left Rowcliffe's house. Her heart
hid in her breast. It was so mortally wounded as to be unaware that it
was hurt.

But at the turn of the white road her heart stirred in its
hiding-place. It stirred at the sight of Karva and with the wind that
brought her the smell of the flowering thorn-trees.

It discerned in these things a power that would before long make her
suffer.

She had no other sense of them.

* * * * *

She came to the drop of the road under Karva where she had seen
Rowcliffe for the first time.

She thought, "I shall never get away from it."

Far off in the bottom the village waited for her.

It had always waited for her; but she was afraid of it now, afraid of
what it might have in store for her. It shared her fear as it crouched
there, like a beaten thing, with its huddled houses, naked and
blackened as if fire had passed over them.

And Essy Gale stood at the Vicarage gate and waited. She had her child
at