these last few weeks--to run away from grief--and the
other night when you asked me--I would have given all I have and am to
feel like any happy girl, who says 'Yes' to her lover. I tried to feel
so. But even then, though I was miserable and reckless, I knew in my
heart--it was impossible! If you suppose--if you like to suppose--that
I--I have hopes or plans--as mean as they would be silly--you must--of
course. But I have given no one any _right_ to think so or say so. Mr.
Wharton--"

Gathering all her self-control, she put out her white hand to him.
"Please--please say good-bye to me. It has been hideous vanity--and
mistake--and wretchedness--our knowing each other--from the beginning.
I _am_ grateful for all you did, I shall always be grateful. I hope--oh!
I hope--that--that you will find a way through this trouble. I don't
want to make it worse by a word. If I could do anything! But I can't.
You must please go. It is late. I wish to call my friend, Mrs. Hurd."

Their eyes met--hers full of a certain stern yet quivering power, his
strained and bloodshot, in his lined young face.

Then, with a violent gesture--as though he swept her out of his path--he
caught up his hat, went to the door, and was gone.

She fell on her chair almost fainting, and sat there for long in the
summer dark, covering her face. But it was not his voice that haunted
her ears.

"_You have done me wrong--I pray God you may not do yourself a greater
wrong in the future!_"

Again and again, amid the whirl of memory, she pressed the sad
remembered words upon the inward wound and fever--tasting, cherishing
the smart of them. And as her trance of exhaustion and despair gradually
left her, it was as though she crept close to some dim beloved form in
whom her heart knew henceforward the secret and sole companion of its
inmost life.

BOOK IV.

"You and I--
Why care by what meanders we are here
I' the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died
Trying to find this place which we have found."

CHAPTER I.

Ah! how purely, cleanly beautiful was the autumn sunrise! After her long
hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of
London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty
delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the
ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning and of memory into
the pearly silence of the morning.

High up on the distant hill to the left, beyon