thing is black or white, but just varying tones of
grey. They make life damned difficult, the half-shades!"

Giving his shoulders a little shake, he turned to Blanche. "I must go,"
he said gently. "Good-bye, Blanche!"

She held out both her hands, and he took them in his, repeating,
"Good-bye, Blanche!"

Then she made her only mistake; she swayed towards him, her face held up
to his in a last invitation. Roughly he put her hands away.

"Not that, Blanche ... not that!" said a voice he hardly recognised as
his own, and, wheeling, he went heavily through the little dead gardens.
Blanche, sick with disappointment, noted dully that he never turned his
head as he passed out of the last. A sob rose to her throat, and as she
heard the choking sound she made, the swift thought came: "That sounded
real! I must be broken-hearted to sob like that...."; and she sobbed
again. Then a flash of self-revelation ran over her, and she stood
aghast.

"Nothing is real about me, nothing!" she cried despairingly, "not even
my sorrow at being so unreal." Drying her eyes, she stared out at the
pale gleam of the Atlantic glinting through the elders and began to
think. She saw love, such love as she was capable of, had been ruled out
of life for her; it became all the more necessary that she should
capture other things that made life pleasant. If she let this new phase
of sincerity become a habit, she was lost indeed; better to slip into
the old self-deceiving Blanche once again. Deliberately she shut off
thoughts of Ishmael, and barred them out until such time as she could
think of him, without effort, from a point of view that in no way
lowered her self-esteem. She had been artificial in her strivings after
sincerity; now, for the last time, she was real in her acceptance of
unreality. Lightly dabbing her eyelids with a pocket powder-puff, she
went back to the cottage.

There she read through the letter again, then consulted a time-table;
she could change at Exeter and catch a train that would enable her to
reach home that evening. She could make up a story to her stepmother to
account for her sudden appearance. Blanche began composing in her mind
what she would say to her. She would pretend not to have had the letter;
even her gentle, garrulous little stepmother's good opinion was dear to
her. She would seal it up again and forward it on herself; it would
reach her at home a day after her own arrival. Yes, thought Blanche,
everything wo