she might have shamed her by refusing
the divorce he asked for.

"It wouldn't have been right for me to come back," said Gertrude, "if I
hadn't been certain in my own heart that I can lift this feeling, and
make it pure." Her voice thickened slightly. "It _is_ pure. I think it
always was. Why should I be ashamed of it? If there's anything spiritual
in me, it's _that_."

Frances was not the woman to warn her of possible delusion; to hint at
the risk run by the passion that disdains and disowns its kindred to the
flesh.

She raised her eyes of tragedy, tender with unfallen tears.

"My dear," she said, "you're a very noble woman."

Across the narrow heath-path, with a lifted head, with flame in her
heart and in her eyes, Gertrude made her way to Brodrick's house.

And once again, with immutable punctuality, the silver-chiming clock
told out the hours; fair hours made perfect by the spirit of order
moving in its round. It moved in the garden, and the lawn was clean and
smooth; the roses rioted no longer; the borders and the paths were
straight again. Indoors, all things on which Gertrude laid her hand slid
sweetly and inaudibly into their place. The little squat god appeared
again within his shrine; and a great peace came upon Brodrick and on
Brodrick's house.

It came upon Jane. She sank into it and it closed over her, a
marvellous, incredible peace. At the turning point when everything
depended upon time, when time was all she wanted and was the one thing
she could not get, suddenly time was made new and golden for her, it was
given to her without measure, without break or stint.

Only once, and for a moment, Gertrude Collett intruded on her peace,
looking in at Jane's study window as she passed on soft feet through the
garden.

"Are you happy _now_?" she said.

XLIV

She moved with such soft feet, on so fine and light a wing that, but for
the blessed effects of it, they were hardly aware of her presence in the
house. Owing to her consummate genius for self-effacement, Brodrick
remained peculiarly unaware. The bond of her secretaryship no longer
held them. It had lapsed when Brodrick married, and Gertrude found
herself superseded as the editor grew great.

For more than a year Brodrick's magazine had had a staff of its own, and
its own office where Miss Addy Ranger sat in Gertrude's seat. Addy no
longer railed at the impermanence and mutability of things. Having
attained the extreme pitch of speed