e lights of the stars gleamed in the clear sky.

Now that she was away from the land Lady Holme became more conscious of
herself and of life. The gentle movement of the boat promoted an echoing
mental movement in her. Thoughts glided through the shadows of her soul
as the boat glided through the shadows of the night. Her mind was like a
pilgrim, wandering in the darkness cast by the soul.

She felt, first, immensely ignorant. She had scarcely ever, perhaps
never, consciously felt immensely ignorant before. She felt also very
poor, very small and very dingy, like a woman very badly dressed. She
felt, finally, that she was the most insignificant of all the living
things under the stars to the stars and all they watched, but that, to
herself, she was of a burning, a flaming significance.

There seemed to be bells everywhere in the lake. The water was full of
their small, persistent voices.

So had her former life been full of small, persistent voices, but
now, abruptly, they were all struck into silence, and she was left
listening--for what? For some far-off but larger voice beyond?

"What am I to do? What am I to do?"

Now she began to say this within herself. The grey calm was floating
away from her spirit, and she began to realise what had happened that
afternoon. She remembered that just before Robin came she had made up
her mind that, though she did not love him, he held the matter of her
life or death in his power. Well, if that were so, he had decided. The
dice had been thrown and death had come up. No hand had been stretched
out in the darkness to the child.

She looked round her. On every side she saw smooth water, a still
surface which hid depths. At the prow of the boat shone a small lantern,
which cast before the boat an arrow of light. And as the boat moved
this arrow perpetually attacked the darkness in front. It was like the
curiosity of man attacking the impenetrable mysteries of God. It seemed
to penetrate, but always new darkness disclosed itself beyond, new
darkness flowed silently around.

Was the darkness the larger voice?

She did not say this to herself. Her mind was not of the definite
species that frames such silent questions often. But, like all human
beings plunged in the strangeness of a terror that is absolutely new,
and left to struggle in it quite alone, she thought a thousand things
that she did not even know she thought, her mind touched many verges of
which she was not aware. The