d down the blinds, and left her in
the darkness suitable for repose.

The Warden had not mentioned a walk. Perhaps he hadn't found an
opportunity with those men present! Should she go for a walk alone? She
found herself dressing, putting on her things with a feverish haste.
Then she took off her coat and sat down, and took her hat off and held
it on her knees.

She thought she heard the sound of a voice in the corridor outside, and
she put on her hat with trembling fingers and caught up the coat and
scarf and her gloves.

She went out into the corridor and found it empty and still. She went to
the head of the stairs. There was no sound coming from the library. But
even if the Warden were still there with the other men, she might not
hear any sounds of their talk. They might be there or they might not. It
was impossible to tell.

Perhaps he had gone to look for her in the drawing-room and, finding no
one there, had gone out.

The drawing-room door was open. She glanced in. The room was empty, of
course, and the afternoon sunshine was coming in through the windows,
falling across the floor towards the fireplace. It would soon creep up
to the portrait over the fireplace.

May waited several minutes, walking about the room and listening, and
then she went out and closed the door behind her. She went down the
staircase into the hall, opened the front door very slowly and went out.

An indescribable loneliness seized her as she walked over the gravelled
court to the gates. The afternoon sunshine was less friendly than rain
and bitter wind. She took the road to the parks, meeting the signs of
the war that had obliterated the old Sunday afternoons of Oxford in the
days of peace. Here was suffering, a deliberate preparation for more
suffering. Did all this world-suffering make her small personal grief
any less? Yes, it did; it would help her to get over the dreary space of
time, the days, months, years till she was a grey-haired woman and was
resigned, having learned patience and even become thankful!

Once she thought she saw the figure of the Warden in the distance, and
then her heart beat suffocatingly, but it was not he. Once she thought
she saw Bingham walking with some other man. He rounded the walk by the
river and--no, it was not Mr. Bingham--the face was different. She began
asking herself questions that had begun to disturb her. Was the real
tragedy of the Warden's engagement to him not the discovery that
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