experience which the
story knows already, in greater detail.

In the middle, a casual housekeeper was fain to speak to Miss Torrens,
for a minute. Who therefore left the room and became a voice,
housekeeping, in the distance.

Then Gwen made Adrian tell the story again, cross-examining him as one
cross-examines obduracy in the hope of admissions that will at least
countenance a belief in the truth that we want to be true. If Adrian had
seen his way to a concession that would have made matters pleasant, he
would have jumped at the chance of making it. But false hope was so much
worse than false despair. Better, surely, a spurious growth of the
latter, with disillusionment to come, than a stinted instalment of the
former with a chance of real despair ahead. Adrian took the view that
Sir Coupland was really a weak, good-natured chap who had wanted Gwen to
have every excuse for hope that could be constructed, even with unsound
materials; but who also wanted the responsibilities of the jerry-builder
to rest on other shoulders than his own. Gwen discredited this view of
the great surgeon's character in her inner consciousness, but hardly had
courage to raise her voice against it, because of the danger of
fostering false hopes in her lover's mind. Nevertheless she could not be
off fanning a little flame of comfort to warm her heart, from the
conviction that so responsible an F.R.C.S. would never have gone out of
his way to show her the letter if he had not thought there was some
chance, however small, of a break in the cloud.

After Sir Coupland's letter and its subject had been allowed to lapse,
Gwen said:--"So now you see what I came for, and that's all about it.
What do you think I did, dearest, yesterday as soon as I had seen my old
lady comfortably settled? She was dreadfully tired, you know. But she
was very plucky and wouldn't admit it."

"Who the dickens _is_ your old lady?"

"Don't be impatient. I'll tell you all in good time. First I want to
tell you where I went yesterday afternoon. I went across the garden
through the rose-forest ... you know?--what you said must be a
rose-forest to smell like that...."

"I know. And you went through the gate you came through,"--even so a
Greek might have spoken to Aphrodite of "the sea-foam you sprang
from"--"and along the field-path to the little bridge fat men get stuck
on...." This was an exaggeration of an overstatement of a disputed fact.

"Yes, my dearest, and I was