dly left the harbour could already have
foundered. Hope freshened her whole body, till she remembered how the
galleon of her mother's hopes had been wrecked and had sunk in as many
fathoms as the full depth of misfortune. Certainly there were those who
died God's creditors, and she had no reason to suppose she was not one
of them.

She was lying with her face to the window, and it occurred to her that
it was the plethora of light let in by that prodigious square of glass
which was making her think and think and think. That the device of a
dead Yaverland's spite against his contemporaries should work on the
victim of a living Yaverland gave her a shuddering sense of the power of
this family. She rolled over and covered her head with the quilt and
wept and wept, until she fell asleep.

It was the slow turning of the doorhandle that woke her. Instantly she
remembered the huge extent to which life had gone wrong during the past
few hours, and rolled back to face the window, which was now admitting a
light grown grave with the lateness of the afternoon. It might be that
it was Richard who was coming into her room to say that he did not want
to marry her either; or Marion, who would be quiet and kind, and yet
terrifying as if she carried a naked sword; or one of those
superior-looking maids to tell her that tea was ready. She lay and
waited. Her heart opened and closed because these were Richard's steps
that were crossing the room, and they were slow. They were more--they
were shy. And when they paused at the foot of the bed his deep sigh was
the very voice of penitence. She shot up out of her pretence of sleep
and sat staring at him. Tears gushed out of her eyes, yet her singing
heart knew there was nothing more irrelevant to life than tears. For he
was pale again and fine-grained, and though he stood vast above her he
was pitiful as a child. She stretched out her arms and cried: "Oh, you
poor thing! Come away! Come close to me!"

But he did not. He came slowly round to the side of the bed and knelt
down, and began to pick at the hem of the counterpane, turning his face
from her. She was aware that she was witnessing the masculine equivalent
of weeping, and let him be, keeping up a little stream of tender words
and sometimes brushing his tense, unhappy hands with faint kisses.

"Forgive me," he muttered painfully at last. "I was a brute--oh, such a
brute. Do, do forgive me."

"Yes, yes," she soothed. "Never heed. I knew