t--the night
of the thirtieth; you were crying to me. And in the morning I saw you."

"You saw me?"

"I saw you in a little room that I've never seen you in. You were going
up and down in it, with your hands held out, like this, in front of you.
You were looking for something. And I knew that I had to come."

"And you came," she said, "just for that?"

"I came--just for that."

An hour later he was alone for a moment with Nina. She had come in with
her hat and jacket on.

"Do you mind," she said, "if I go out? I've _got_ to go."

There was nothing to be said. He knew the nature of her necessity, and
she knew that he knew. She stood confronting him and his knowledge with
a face that never flinched. His eyes protested, with that eternal
tenderness of his that had been her undoing. She steadied her voice
under it.

"I want you to know, Owen, that I sent for you."

"It was like your goodness."

She shrugged her thin shoulders. "There was nothing else," she said,
"that I could do."

That night, while Prothero and Laura sat together holding each other's
hands, Nina walked up and down outside on the Embankment, in the rain.
She had said that she was more like a man than a woman; and with her
stride that gave her garments recklessly to the rain, with her impetuous
poise, and hooded, hungry eyes, she had the look of some lean and
vehement adolescent, driven there by his youth.

The next day, very early, she went down into Wales, a virgin to her
mountains.

She had done all she could.

XL

Laura was staying at the Brodricks. She was to stay, Jane insisted on
it, until she was married. She would have to stay for ever then, Laura
said. Her marriage seemed so far-off, so unlikely, so impossible.

For Prothero had offended the powers that governed his material destiny,
the editors and proprietors of the "Morning Telegraph." A man who,
without a moment's notice, could fling up his appointment, an
appointment, mind you, that he had obtained, not by any merit of his
own, but through the grace and favour of an editor's wife, an
appointment that he held precariously, almost on sufferance, by mercy
extended to him day by day and hour by hour, what could he hope for from
sane, responsible men like Brodrick and Levine? Did he imagine that
appointments hung on lamp-posts ready to his hand? Or that they only
waited for his appearance, to fall instantly upon his head? And that, if
they did fall on his head, he coul