they met his cold glance. "It is
so!" she cried defiantly.

The silence throbbed and was hot. She dropped her head on her hand and
envied the quiet, moonlit marshes.

He shrugged his shoulders and moved towards the door. "I'm going to
bed," he said.

"That's right," she agreed, and rose and began to clear the table.
Uneasily he stood and watched her.

"Where does the Registrar live?" he asked suddenly.

"The Registrar?"

"Yes. I want to go to-morrow and put up the banns, or whatever it is one
does."

"Of course, of course. Well, the registrar's named Woodham. He lives in
the house next the school. 'Mizpah,' I think they call it. He's there
only in the afternoon. Did you specially want to go to-morrow?"

"Yes," he said. "Good-night."

When he had gone upstairs she lifted her skirts and waltzed round the
table. "Surely I've earned the right to dance a little now," she thought
grimly. But it was not very much fun to dance alone, so she went up to
her room, shielding her eyes with her hand as she passed his door. She
flung herself violently down on the bed, as if it were a well and there
would be the splash of water and final peace. She had lost everything.
She had lost Richard. When she had trodden on that loose board in the
passage, that shut door might so easily have opened. She had lost the
memory that had been the sustenance of her inmost, her most apprehensive
and despairing soul. For it was the same memory now that she had spoken
of it. Virtue had gone out of it. But she was too fatigued to grieve,
and presently there stood by her bedside a phantom Harry, a pouting lad
complaining of his own mortality. She put out her hand to him and
crooned, "There, there!" and told herself she must not fidget if he were
there, for the dead were used to quietness; and profound sleep covered
her.

Suddenly she awoke and found herself staring towards panes exquisite
with the frost's engravings, and beyond them a blue sky which made it
seem that this earth was a flaw at the heart of a jewel. Words were on
her lips. "Christ is risen, Christ is risen." It was something she had
read in a book; she did not know why she was saying it. The clock said
that it was half-past eight, so she leaped out of bed into the vibrant
cold, and bathed and dressed. Her sense of ruin was like lead, but was
somehow the cause of exultation in her heart as the clapper is the cause
of the peal of a bell. She went and knocked on Ellen's door. There w