and left it to cross a
crisp, grassy slope from where, standing still and turning to see, she
looked down over all the country and saw, far away, the roofs of
Merriston House. She stood for a long time looking down at it, the hot
wind ruffling her skirts and hair. It was a heartless day and she
herself felt heartless. She felt herself as something silent, swift, and
raging. For now she was to taste to the full the bitter difference
between the finality of personal decision and a finality imposed,
fatefully and irrevocably, from without. She had thought herself
prepared for this ending of hope. She had even, imagining herself
hardened and indifferent, gone in advance of it and had sought to put
the past under her feet and to build up a new life. But she had not been
prepared; that she now knew. The imagination of the fact was not its
realisation in her very blood and bones, nor the standing ready, armed
for the blow, this feel of the blade between her ribs. And looking down
at the only home she had ever had, in moments long, sharp, dream-like,
her strength was drained from, her as if by a fever, and she felt that
she was changed all through and that each atom of her being was set, as
it were, a little differently, making of her a new personality, through
this shock of sudden hopelessness.

She felt her knees weak beneath her and she moved on slowly, away from
the sun, to a lonely little wood that bordered the hill-top. In her
sudden weakness she climbed the paling that enclosed it with some
difficulty, wondering if she were most inconveniently going to faint,
and walking blindly along a narrow path, in the sudden cool and
darkness, she dropped down on the moss at the first turning of the way.

Here, at last, was beauty. The light, among the fanlike branches, looked
like sea-water streaked with gold; the tall boles of the beeches were
like the pillars of a temple sunken in the sea. Helen lay back, folded
her arms behind her head, and stared up at the chinks of far brightness
in the green roof overhead. It was like being drowned, deep beneath the
surface of things. If only she could be at peace, like a drowned thing.
Lying there, she longed to die, to dissolve away into the moss, the
earth, the cool, green air. And feeling this, in the sudden beauty,
tears, for the first time, came to her eyes. She turned over on her
face, burying it in her arms and muttering in childish language, 'I'm
sick of it; sick to death of it.'