is rich
pretences, dismayed.

He had been taking his afternoon "constitutional." He had discovered her
beyond the stile just in time to pull up. Then had come a fatal, a
preposterous hesitation. She stared at him now, with hard,
expressionless eyes.

He stared back at her, until his plump pink face was all consternation.
He was extraordinarily distressed. It was as if a thousand unspoken
things had been said between them.

"No wish," he said, "intrude."

If he had had the certain balm, how gladly would he have given it!

He broke the spell by stepping back into the lane. He made a gesture
with his hands, as if he would have wrung them. And then he had fled
down the lane--almost at a run.

"Po' girl," he shouted. "Po' girl," and left her staring.

Staring--and then she laughed.

This was good. This was the sort of thing one could tell Teddy, when at
last he came back and she could tell him anything. And then she realised
again; there was no more Teddy, there would be no telling. And suddenly
she fell weeping.

"Oh, Teddy, Teddy," she cried through her streaming tears. "How could
you leave me? How can I bear it?"

Never a tear had she shed since the news first came, and now she could
weep, she could weep her grief out. She abandoned herself unreservedly
to this blessed relief....

Section 6

There comes an end to weeping at last, and Letty lay still, in the red
light of the sinking sun.

She lay so still that presently a little foraging robin came dirting
down to the grass not ten yards away and stopped and looked at her. And
then it came a hop or so nearer.

She had been lying in a state of passive abandonment, her swollen wet
eyes open, regardless of everything. But those quick movements caught
her back to attention. She began to watch the robin, and to note how it
glanced sidelong at her and appeared to meditate further approaches. She
made an almost imperceptible movement, and straightway the little
creature was in a projecting spray of berried hawthorn overhead.

Her tear-washed mind became vaguely friendly. With an unconscious
comfort it focussed down to the robin. She rolled over, sat up, and
imitated his friendly "cheep."

Section 7

Presently she became aware of footsteps rustling through the grass
towards her.

She looked over her shoulder and discovered Mr. Britling approaching by
the field path. He looked white and tired and listless, even his
bristling hair and moustache conveyed