looking up from his chair across the hearth, made the abrupt
announcement:

"My dear," he said, as though following a train of thought of which she
only heard this final phrase, "it's really quite impossible for me to
go."

And so abrupt, inconsequent, it sounded that she at first misunderstood.
She thought he meant to go out into the garden or the woods. But her
heart leaped all the same. The tone of his voice was ominous.

"Of course not," she answered, "it would be _most_ unwise. Why should
you--?" She referred to the mist that always spread on autumn nights
upon the lawn, but before she finished the sentence she knew that _he_
referred to something else. And her heart then gave its second horrible
leap.

"David! You mean abroad?" she gasped.

"I mean abroad, dear, yes."

It reminded her of the tone he used when saying good-bye years ago,
before one of those jungle expeditions she dreaded. His voice then was
so serious, so final. It was serious and final now. For several moments
she could think of nothing to say. She busied herself with the teapot.
She had filled one cup with hot water till it overflowed, and she
emptied it slowly into the slop-basin, trying with all her might not to
let him see the trembling of her hand. The firelight and the dimness of
the room both helped her. But in any case he would hardly have noticed
it. His thoughts were far away....

~VI~

Mrs. Bittacy had never liked their present home. She preferred a flat,
more open country that left approaches clear. She liked to see things
coming. This cottage on the very edge of the old hunting grounds of
William the Conqueror had never satisfied her ideal of a safe and
pleasant place to settle down in. The sea-coast, with treeless downs
behind and a clear horizon in front, as at Eastbourne, say, was her
ideal of a proper home.

It was curious, this instinctive aversion she felt to being shut in--by
trees especially; a kind of claustrophobia almost; probably due, as has
been said, to the days in India when the trees took her husband off and
surrounded him with dangers. In those weeks of solitude the feeling had
matured. She had fought it in her fashion, but never conquered it.
Apparently routed, it had a way of creeping back in other forms. In this
particular case, yielding to his strong desire, she thought the battle
won, but the terror of the trees came back before the first month had
passed. They laughed in her face.

She never l