ny other decent person, have thought of a man
who could draw back from his word, for such a cause?

No!--he resigned himself. He would do nothing mean and ungentlemanly. A
policy of waiting and diplomacy should be tried. Ferrier might be of
some use. But, if nothing availed, he must marry and make the best of
it. He wondered to what charitable societies his mother would leave
her money!

Slowly he strolled back along the hill. That dim light, high up on the
shrouded walls of Beechcote, seemed to go with him, softly, insistently
reminding him of Diana. The thought of her moved him deeply. He longed
to have her in his arms, to comfort her, to feel her dependent on him
for the recovery of joy and vitality. It was only by an obstinate and
eager dwelling upon her sweetness and charm that he could protect
himself against the rise of an invading wave of repugnance and
depression; the same repugnance, the same instinctive longing to escape,
which he had always felt, as boy or man, in the presence of sickness, or
death, or mourning.

* * * * *

Marsham had been long asleep in his queer little room at "The Green
Man." The last lights were out in the village, and the moon had set.
Diana stole out of bed; Muriel must not hear her, Muriel whose eyes were
already so tired and tear-worn with another's grief. She went to the
window, and, throwing a shawl over her, she knelt there, looking out.
She was dimly conscious of stars, of the hill, the woods; what she
really _saw_ was a prison room as she was able to imagine it, and her
mother lying there--her young mother--only four years older than she,
Diana, was now. Or again she saw the court of law--the judge in the
black cap--and her mother looking up. Fanny had said she was small and
slight--with dark hair.

The strange frozen horror of it made tears--or sleep--or
rest--impossible. She did not think much of Marsham; she could hardly
remember what she had written to him. Love was only another anguish. Nor
could it protect her from the images which pursued her. The only thought
which seemed to soothe the torture of imagination was the thought
stamped on her brain tissue by the long inheritance of centuries--the
thought of Christ on Calvary. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?" The words repeated themselves again and again. She did not pray in
words. But her agony crept to the foot of what has become through the
action and interaction of two tho