The sun slid over the edge of the sweating earth. Its red-hot plunge into the sea behind the hills was almost audible. The black cloud, fuming up from its setting-place, was as the steam of the collision. In great clots and coils it rolled upwards, spreading as it thinned, till it was a pall of vapour that sheeted all the lemon-coloured sky. Suddenly a cold wind sprang up, raced down the silent heavens, and, by way of Eastern Europe and the North Sea and the straight Roman road that drives down England, tore along the Utterbridge byways, and into the open window of Clare Hartill's parlour. A touch of its cold lips on her hair, and brow, and breast, and it was out again, driving the dust before it.

Clare shivered. She was very tired of waiting.... It was inexplicable that Alwynne should be late; but Clare with a half laugh, promised Alwynne to forego her scolding if she would but come.... The dusk and the wind and the silence were getting on her nerves.... The tick of the hall clock, for instance, was aggressive, insistent, maddening in its precise monotony.... Oh, unbearable! With a gesture that was hysterical in its abandonment, Clare rose suddenly and flung into the hall, plucked open the clock door, and removed the pendulum. The released wire waggled foolishly into silence, like an idiot, tongue a-loll.

As the quiet hunted Clare into her sitting-room again, a little silver wire flickered down the sky like a scared snake, and for an instant she saw herself reflected in a convex mirror, a Clare bleached and shining and askew, like a St. Michael in a stained-glass window. Dusk and the thunder followed. The storm was beginning.

Clare moved about restlessly. She disliked storms. Her eyes ached, and she was cramped with waiting, and Alwynne had not come. She would, of course.... That woman had detained her, purposely, no doubt, and now there was the storm to delay her.... But Alwynne would come.... Clare smiled securely.

Again the lightning whipped across the heavens, and thunder roared in its wake.

Clare went to the window and watched the sky. The pane of glass was grateful to her hot forehead. She was too tired, too bruised and shaken by her own recent anger to arrange her thoughts, to pose for the moment, even to herself—of all audiences the most critical. The interview with Elsbeth Loveday rehearsed itself incessantly, pricking, probing, bludgeoning, in crescendo of intonation, innuendo, open attack, to the final triumphant insult. Triumphant, because true. The insult could cut through her defences and strike at her very self, because it was true. Her pride agonised. She had thought herself shrouded, invulnerable. And yet Elsbeth, whom of all women she had reckoned negligible, had guessed, had pitied.... Yet even her enemy was forgotten, as she sat and shuddered at the wound dealt; plucked and shrank, and plucked again at the arrow-tip rankling in it still.

The hours had passed in an evil mazement. But Alwynne was to come.... She thought of Alwynne with shifting passions of relief and longing and sheer crude lust for revenge. Alwynne would come.... Alwynne would soothe and comfort, intuitive, never waiting for the cry for help.

And Alwynne should pay.... Oho! Alwynne should pay Elsbeth's debts ... should wince, and shrink, and whiten. Scientific vivisection of one nerve. Wait a little, Alwynne!—Ah, Alwynne—the dearest—the beloved—the light and laughter of one's life.... What fool is whispering that Clare can hurt her?... Alwynne shall see when she comes, who loves her.... There shall be a welcome, the royalest welcome she has ever had.... For what in all the world has Clare but Alwynne, and having Alwynne, has not Clare the world?

Ah, well.... Perhaps, she had not been always good to Alwynne.... To-day, for instance, she might have been kinder.... But Alwynne always understood.... That was the comfort of Alwynne, that she always understood.... Why didn't she come? Wasn't there an echo of a step far down the street?

When Alwynne came, they would make plans.... It would not be easy to wean the girl from her aunt, at least while they lived in the same town, the same country.... But one could travel, could take Alwynne quite away.... Italy.... Greece.... Egypt.... they would go round the world together, shake off the school and all it stood for.... In a new world, begin a new life.... Why not? She had money enough to burn.... It would not be hard to persuade Alwynne, adventurous, infatuate.... Once gone, Elsbeth might whistle for her niece.... They would talk it over to-morrow ... to-night ... as soon as Alwynne came....

Was that thunder or a knocking? Rat-tat! Rat-tat! She had not been mistaken after all.... Alwynne! Alwynne!

And Clare, with an appearance on her that even Alwynne had never seen, ran like a child to open the door.

On the threshold stood a messenger boy, proffering a telegram. She took it.

"Any answer, Miss!" for she had offered to close the door.

"Oh, of course!" She frowned, and pulled open the flimsy sheet.

The boy waited. He peered past her, interested in the odd pictures on the walls, and the glimpse of a table luxuriously set. The minutes sped. He had soon seen all he could, and began to fidget.

"Any answer, Miss?" he hinted.

"Oh!" said Clare vaguely. "Answer? No. No answer. No answer at all."

The boy knuckled his forehead and clattered away down the staircase.

Mechanically Clare shut the door, locked and bolted it and secured it with the chain. Then she returned to the sitting-room and crossed to her former station by the open window.

The storm was ending in a downpour of furious tropical rain. It beat in unheeded upon her thin dress and bare neck and the open telegram in her hands, as, with lips parted and a faint, puzzled pucker between her brows, she conned over the message—

I cannot come to-night.—I have gone to Dene. I am going to marry Roger.

She read it and re-read, twisting it this way and that, for it was barely visible in the wet dusk. It seemed an eternity before its full meaning dawned upon her. And yet she had known all there was to know when she confronted the messenger boy (Oh, Destiny is up to date) and took her sentence from his grimy hand.

I am going to marry Roger.

"Very well, Alwynne!" Clare flung up her head, up and back. Her face was drowned in the shadows of the crimson curtain, but her neck caught the last of the light, shone like old marble. The whole soul of her showed for an instant in its defiant outline, in the involuntary pulsation that quivered across its rigidity, in the uncontrollable flutter beneath the chin.

The thin, capable fingers twisted and clenched over the sodden paper.

She moved at last, spoke into space. Passion, anger, and the cool contempt of the school-mistress for a mutinous class, mingled grotesquely in her voice.

"Very well, Alwynne! Just as you please, of course. There is no more to be said." She tossed away the little ball of paper as she spoke.

She wandered aimlessly about the room; turned to her book-shelves after a while, and stood a long time, pulling out volume after volume, opening each at random, reading a page, closing the book again, letting it slide from her hand, never troubling to replace it. She was tired at last and turned to her writing-table.

It was piled high with exercise-books, and she corrected a couple before she swept them also aside.

The rain had not faltered in its swishing downfall. It beat against the panes, and on to the sill, and dripped down into a pool beneath the open window.

"She will have to come back on Monday," said Clare suddenly. "She can't go off like that. There's the school——" She broke off abruptly, as a gust of wind soughed by.

I cannot come. I have gone to Dene. I am going to marry Roger. She could hear Alwynne's voice in it, answering.

"But why?" cried Clare piteously. "Why? What is it? What have I done?"

"S'hush!" sighed the rain. "S'hush!"

"I loved her," cried Clare. "I loved her. What have I done?"

"S'hush!" sobbed the rain. "S'hush! S'hush!"

She turned to the darkening windows, and started, and shuddered away again, stricken dumb and shaking. A pool of something red and wet was spreading over the polished boards, and a thin trickle was stealing forward to her feet.

Blood?

Fool.... The red of the curtains reflected, tingeing a pool of rain-water.... Blood, nevertheless.... She had forgotten Louise.

What had Alwynne heard? A garbled version of that last interview? Fool again—unless the dead can speak.... But Alwynne knew.... Something had been revealed to her, suddenly, during their idle talk.... But when? But how? She had come as a lover ... she had left as a stranger ... what in any god's name, had she guessed? Clare's subconscious memory reproduced for her instantly, with photographic accuracy, details of the scene that she had not even known she had observed. Alwynne had changed, in an instant, between a word and a reply.... What was it that Clare had said—what trifling, teasing nothing, flung out in pure wantonness? But Alwynne's face, her dear face, had become, for an instant—Clare strained to the memory—as the face of Louise.... Louise had looked at her like that, that other day.... What had they seen then, both of them? Was she Gorgon to bring that look into their faces? Louise—yes—she could understand Louise.... She did not care to think about Louise.... But Alwynne—what had she ever done to Alwynne? At least Alwynne might tell her what she had done.... She would not submit to it.... She would not be put aside.... She would at least have justice....

I am going to marry Roger.

Useless! All useless! The struggle was over before she had known she was fighting.... She knew that in Alwynne's life there was no longer any part for her. And Clare had travelled far that evening, to phrase it thus. Sharing was a strange word for her to use. But she recognised dully that even sharing was out of her power. What had she to do with a husband, and housewifery, and the bearing of children? Alwynne married was Alwynne dead.

Alwynne in love.... Alwynne married.... Alwynne putting any living thing before Clare! She broke into bitter laughter at the idea. What had happened? What had Clare done or left undone? She realised grimly that of this at least she might be sure—it had been her own doing.... No influence could have wrought against her own.... Alwynne, at least, was where she was, because Clare had sent her, not because another had beckoned.... And that was the comfort she had stored up for herself, to last her in the lean years to come....

What was the use of regretting?

Alwynne was gone.... Then forget her.... There were other fish in the sea.... There was a promising class this term.... That child in the Fourth.... She wondered if Alwynne had noticed her.... She must ask Alwynne.... Alwynne had gone away, had gone to Dene, was going to marry Roger....

Well, there was always work.... Where was that letter to Miss Marsham?

She moved stiffly in her seat, lit a candle, and drew towards her the half-written sheet that lay open on the blotter. She re-read it.

You will, I am sure, understand how much I appreciate your offer of the partnership, but after much consideration I have decided——

She hesitated, crossed out the but and wrote an and above it, and continued—

—to accept it. I will come to tea to-morrow, as you kindly suggest.

She finished the letter, signed it, stamped and addressed, and sat idle at last, staring down at it.

The neat handwriting danced, and flickered, and grew dim.

With an awkward gesture she put her hands to her eyes, and brought them away again, wet. She smiled at that, a twisted, mocking smile. She supposed she was crying.... She did not remember ever having done such a thing....

So her future was decided.... It was to be work and loneliness—loneliness and work ... because, it seemed, she had no friends left.... Yet Alwynne had promised many things.... What had she done to Alwynne? What had she done?

She turned within herself and reviewed her life as she remembered it, thought by thought, word by word, action by action. Faces rose about her, whispering reminders, forgotten faces of the many who had loved her: from her old nurse, dead long ago, to Louise, and Alwynne, and foolish Olivia Pring.

The candle at her elbow flared and dribbled, and died at last with a splutter and a gasp. She paid no heed.

When the dawn came, she was still sitting there, thinking—thinking.

March 1914—September 1915.

THE END

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