er it at the hat factory in the morning, with his
own hand.

CHAPTER XXII

GOOD-BYE

Left alone, after Thyrza's second visit to him in the library, Egremont
had no mind to continue his task. He idled about for a while, read half
a page in a volume he took out of the box at hazard, then put on his
overcoat and went out by the front door, which he locked behind him
with the key he carried for his own convenience.

He was wishing that he had not fallen into this piece of folly. As long
as no one but Grail and himself was concerned, it mattered nothing; to
have established a secret intercourse with Thyrza was a result of his
freak for which he was not at all prepared. And he could not see his
way out of the difficulty. He might go and see Grail, and let him know
what he was doing, but that would involve deliberate concealment of
Thyrza's visits. He could not speak of them; he had no right to do so.
If Thyrza on her part told all about it--why, that would make it, for
him, still more unpleasant. And Thyrza was not likely to do that; he
felt assured of it. Precisely; that meant that henceforth there would
be a secret understanding between himself and Gilbert's wife. Most
certainly he desired nothing of the kind.

A weak way of putting it. Walter dreaded anything of the kind. Two
days--Monday, Tuesday--and in that brief time the whole face of the
future had changed for him. On Sunday evening he had sat thinking over
his future relations with Grail and Thyrza. The fact that he
consciously brought himself to reflect upon the subject of course
proved that it involved certain doubts and difficulties for him, but in
half an hour he believed that he had put his mind in order. Thyrza
interested him--why not say it out, as he was bent on understanding
himself? She interested him more vitally than any girl he had ever
known. Very possibly he saw her in the light of illusion; should his
opportunities grant him a completer knowledge of her, he might not
improbably discover that after all she was but a pretty girl of the
people, attractive in a great measure owing to her very deficiencies.
He would very likely come to laugh at himself for having thought that
her value was above that of Annabel Newthorpe. But he had to deal with
the present, and in the present Thyrza seemed to him all gold. Had
there existed no Gilbert Grail, he would have been in love with Thyrza.

The plain truth. But Gilbert Grail did exist, and in Walter