It was nearly twelve o'clock when Caroline went up to her room. Her mind was calmed by her talk with her father. She loved him so much that his contentment could hardly fail of some reflection in her. And, though jealousy was far removed from her, it gave her pleasure to think that when Beatrix had left him he would need her love and companionship more. Perhaps it was, as he had said, she was feeling hurt that Beatrix had not come to her for the deep love and sympathy that was there for her in her joys as well as in her troubles. Although her sympathies had not been undivided in that trouble of a year ago, for she had believed that her father had been right and had felt for him during a period of something like estrangement as much as she had felt for Beatrix in being parted from her lover, still her heart had beaten much closer to her sister's then than it did now. Beatrix had leant upon her. She had been wayward; perhaps she had even been selfish. She had often hurt Caroline, when the hurt in herself had made her hard and unreasonable towards all but the one who could then have assuaged it. But Caroline had gone through it all with her, and loved her all the more for having shared her pain. It was rather hard if she was to be held at arm's length now, after having given so much, and being ready to give so much.

Her sadness came upon her again when she had shut herself into her room and made ready for bed. She heard her father go upstairs, and the house became quite still. The clock of the church began to strike, and the clock on the stable turret chimed in on a fainter, quicker note. Before they had finished, the door of her room opened and startled her wildly. It was Beatrix, who came in, a figure all in white, and threw herself into her arms, and clung to her sobbing.

For a moment Caroline felt giddy with the shock of her surprise, and the fear of what was coming. But she rallied herself and murmuring soft words drew Beatrix to the bed and sat there holding her to her breast.

"I've been such an awful beast to you, darling," Beatrix sobbed, "I had to come and ask you to forgive me. I couldn't sleep till I told you how much I love you."

The childish confession made Caroline inclined to laugh and cry at the same time, but brought with it such a sense of relief as was almost bliss to her troubled mind.

"I know you have wanted me to tell you everything," Beatrix went on, her sobs becoming less frequent, "and I've wanted to all the time. But something horrid in me kept it back, and I know I've hurt you frightfully, darling, and I shall never forgive myself for it as long as I live."

Caroline swept the hair from her forehead and kissed her lovingly, as her mother might have done. She felt immeasurably older than her sister, who seemed to her a little child again. "If you tell me now, my darling!" she said tenderly.

Beatrix sat up, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of Caroline's light dressing-gown. "Yes, I will. I want to," she said, in a pathetic voice. "It's only you I can tell everything to."

She bent her head and played with the ribbon that lay across Caroline's knee. "I know what you have thought," she said. "I didn't seem to be noticing, or to care, but I felt it all through me all the time. I couldn't be such a hard-hearted beast as not to mind what you were thinking, darling."

A few more tears and answering caresses, and she told her story, with her head on Caroline's shoulder, and Caroline's arm round her.

"I don't think I've behaved very well to Dick," she said. "I knew that he loved me very much, and yet I played with him. Perhaps I even led him on. But I didn't know how much he really did love me, or I wouldn't have done it. He's so strong and so deep; it was like playing with fire. Perhaps I didn't do anything very wrong till two days ago, for though I'd let him talk to me I hadn't given him any idea that I—that I wanted him to go any further. He has told me since that he would never have asked me to marry him unless I had said or done something to make him think that he could. I suppose I saw that it was like that. I felt, somehow, that he was trying to bend me to his will—no, not that, but there was something in him that I couldn't move. And that vexed me. Oh, I was a beast! We went into the garden; I'd sent Bunting away so that I could show him I wanted to be alone with him. Then I led him on to tell me that he loved me; and at last he did. Then—oh, I hate myself for what I did."

She stopped, and cried again on Caroline's shoulder. Caroline soothed her, but felt her heart growing heavy again.

"Well, I must tell you everything," she began again, "but I wish I hadn't got it to tell. It spoils everything. When he told me that he loved me, and asked me to marry him, I pretended to be very surprised, and said that I'd no idea of marrying him. He was very quiet, and let me go on. I said I didn't love him; I had had enough of that sort of love, and only loved you, and Dad, and the others. I can't think what made me go on like that. I was a fool. But he stopped me suddenly. He was very angry. He said I had known quite well that he would say what he had, and that I had meant him to, and that I wasn't what he had thought I was. Then he went away, without saying good-bye or anything.

"I was frightened then, and—and ashamed of myself, because what he had said was true. And I didn't want him to go away altogether. I thought perhaps after all I did love him a little. Oh, I don't know what I thought. But I went upstairs to the window to look at him coming from the stables—he had ridden over—and to see what he looked like. And Bunting came down from the attic and caught me there, but of course he didn't know what I was doing, and he startled me so much that I flew out at him."

She laughed a little. "Poor darling Bunting!" she said. "I startled him. I don't think he has ever seen me like that before. But I told him I was sorry afterwards, and he was awfully sweet about it and said it didn't matter a damn. I think he'd have been still more surprised if he'd known what I was there for. Fortunately he wasn't near enough to the window to see Dick.

"Well, then, I was rather miserable, but I was angry too at the way he had spoken to me. Sometimes I was one and sometimes I was the other, and I didn't know whether I cared for him or not. The next morning it had all calmed down rather, and I made up my mind I wouldn't care whether he came back or not, and that if he did I would behave just as I had before, and pretend that nothing had happened. I don't know whether I should have been able to keep that up if he hadn't come to lunch next day. When Jarvis brought up his name I was glad, though I don't think I showed it, did I?"

Caroline reminded her of what she had said, and she smiled and said she thought she had hidden it very well, and by the way he behaved she thought he intended to ignore what had happened too.

"I was a little frightened when you went indoors and left me alone with him," she said. "But for some time he went on talking as if he had forgotten everything, and I was rather grateful to him, and felt that I did like him very much. He's so strong and—and self-controlled; and I admire strong men, who won't let you play with them. I had had enough of that. I didn't want to play with him any more, and I wanted him to see that I was sorry, without having to say so. So I suppose I was extra nice to him. And I did want him at least as a friend.

"Then suddenly he said something. That's his way—when you're not expecting it. He said perhaps he'd made a mistake about me yesterday, but he didn't think he'd been altogether mistaken. If I didn't love him very much now, he wanted me all the same, and he was sure he could make me happy. Would I marry him and let him try?

"It was the last thing I expected. I didn't know what to say or what to think. Then he said that he shouldn't worry me with love-making until I was ready for it. He said in his quiet deep sort of way, 'When you are, my dear, you'll have all you can want,' and he made me feel, somehow, that perhaps I should come to want it—from him, I mean."

She stopped for a moment as if she were examining herself. "I can't think now what made me say, yes," she said. "I didn't feel in the least like I did when I—when I said yes, before. I think if he had—had kissed me, or treated me as if I had already given him everything, I should have drawn back, perhaps run away from him. But he just took both my hands, and looked me straight in the face and said: 'Thank you; I promise you that you shall never be sorry for it.' Oh, he is good—and strong. I think I do love him. If you'd seen the look in his eyes! It touched me, and made me want to cry. I think if he had kissed me then, I shouldn't have minded."

"Hasn't he kissed you at all?" Caroline asked. The heaviness of heart which the beginning of the story had brought her had lightened. It would not have been told her in just that way if Beatrix had come to her to ask her help in extricating herself from an impossible position. And yet she had been inclined to think that it had been all a mistake, and had better be ended, for the sake of Beatrix's happiness.

"I'm coming to that, darling. You must let me tell it to you all as it happened."

Caroline kissed her again. As her heart grew lighter, the channels of her love were clearing.

"We went and walked in the garden," Beatrix went on. "We talked about what we would do when we were married—where we should live, and all that. I felt quite pleased and excited. It was something going to happen. I think only one part of me was working. And I felt as if I'd come to anchor. You know, darling, I haven't enjoyed myself this year, as I did last. That had spoilt everything for me. I think if I had lived quietly at home, as you have, it might have been different. But I'm rather tired of going about, and remembering that all the time. I don't want him any longer—of course. I hate him. But what I thought he was—having somebody all my own who would love me, and I would do all I could to make him happy—I suppose if you've once wanted that you always want it; and a home of your own, and children of your own to love."

"Yes, I know, dearest," said Caroline softly. She was longing to come to the point at which Beatrix might show her that all that, which lies before women made of their clay as the ultimate end of their lives, would come to Beatrix through the only gate which leads to its perfect fulfilment. She had thought at one time that it might be taken by a deliberate choice of a partner, and that the love that would sweeten it might come afterwards. But she thought differently now. Beatrix herself had taught her. That first love of hers, broken off as it had been, had been the right beginning; it would have led her through the only gate. Would this second adventure take her into the right path? If not, she might get much in life that would satisfy her; she would bend herself to it, and the world might not see that she had not all. But it would change her. She would not grow to the full stature of her true womanhood. Secondary things would be put above primary, for primary things would be out of her reach. It was not for such a one as Beatrix to make a merely satisfactory marriage.

The word she had been longing for came sooner than she had expected. "I won't go over it all any more," Beatrix said. "You saw what I was all last night and all to-day. I thought I should be able to keep it up, but I know now I couldn't have. Sometimes when I have been with him I felt like crying, because he was so matter-of-fact about everything, and I knew he wasn't really feeling like that, but was longing for me to give him a chance of being different. But I remembered what I had done before, and I wasn't sure that I really wanted him to—to make love to me.

"It was when he went away to-night. You know I went to see him out. I think if he had gone as he did last night—just as if we weren't engaged at all—I couldn't have gone on with it, I was feeling so miserable. Perhaps I looked at him in a way that showed him; for he looked at me as he was saying good-night. I saw by his eyes how much he loved me, and he kissed me very gently, on the forehead, and called me something sweet which I won't tell you; and then he went away."

"Oh, darling, I'm so glad," said Caroline. "I know by the way you tell me that it was what you really wanted all the time, wasn't it?"

"I don't know whether I did want it all the time. I know I should have been miserable if he had gone away without. And I wished when I'd gone upstairs that I'd given him something in return, some sign just to show that I didn't want him to go back to that horrid cold talk of to-day and yesterday. Do you think he will? He's not so frightfully strong, after all. I'm sure he never meant to show me what he did. He couldn't keep it under."

Caroline laughed gently at her. "Yes, he is strong," she said, "with the right sort of strength. He wouldn't have shown you that, if you hadn't shown him something first. Oh, darling, you do love him, don't you? You wouldn't be going to marry him if you didn't."

Beatrix didn't answer at once. "I suppose I'm frightened to let myself go," she said. "I did before, and it's as if something had got stopped up in me. I don't feel towards him as I did, and with him, though I admire and trust him a thousand times more. Will it come, Cara, dear? Can I go on, without doing him harm? He's so good and so fine, he ought to have somebody who would simply worship him, and think of nobody else; not somebody who has already thought of somebody else, somebody not to be compared with him."

Caroline wouldn't tell her that she thought it would all come. She knew it would, because now she saw that it was already there, though it was struggling for life through the dead waste of a once living but now withered love. "It's what you feel now, darling, that matters," she said. "I think something has been going on in you all the time that you can't recognise, because it's different from what it was."

"Do you think that's it?" she asked rather pathetically. "I hope it is. It isn't that I want all that to come back, though it did make me very happy while it lasted. But I don't want to disappoint him. I don't want to give him something, just because I feel like it for the moment, and then take it away again."

"If you give him something because you feel like it—well, that's just what you'll be right in doing, darling. It wouldn't be right to hold it back. If you feel like it at any time, it shows it's there. I'm sure he's worth loving, B."

"Oh, yes, he is. I think I do love him. I know I want him to come back to-morrow."

Those were the words that rang in Caroline's ears when Beatrix had left her, comforted, and assured of her forgiveness for the horrid way in which she had behaved herself towards her. Poor little B! It would all have been so different if this had been the first time she had trodden the happy path of love. She was all softness and sweetness, made to capitulate to a strong man's wooing. But she had been bruised and torn, and there were sensitive places in her which shrank from the lightest touch. Her lover would not get the full response from her until he had taught her not to fear his touch on them.

But she wanted him to come back. Her heart was fluttering out to meet him. Its wings would grow stronger.

He came early the next morning. He had walked the three miles from Wilborough, where breakfast was earlier than at Abington, because any other mode of progression would have brought him there before it was convenient, and yet he wanted to be moving. Beatrix had gone down the ferny glade towards the gate in the wall that led into the park, not expecting to meet him so soon, but because she also felt it necessary to be in motion, and that was the way he would probably come.

She was close upon the gate when he opened it and came through. His face looked as if it had been suddenly struck with a bright light as he saw her. But he hesitated a moment before he spoke. He was still putting constraint on himself.

She saw the sudden bright look, and the change, and it moved her profoundly. She was rather taken by surprise too, for she had not expected to see him, though she had come down through the park with no other purpose. But she smiled at him and said: "Here I am, you see, waiting for you."

Was it an invitation? He couldn't tell. He had not been prepared for it. He smiled at her in return. "You won't often have to wait for me," he said. "If I had thought you would be out so early I would have motored over."

Then she turned, and they walked slowly back towards the house together. At first both of them were at a loss what to say.

She slipped her hand into his arm. It came natural to her to do so; it was so she walked with her father, and she no longer felt afraid of Dick; He was dependent on her, and he was her friend.

He flushed under his brown skin, and looked down at her. She was not wearing her hat with the broad brim to-day, and he could see her face. Since he had gained her promise he had seen it excited, merry, pleased sometimes, sometimes it had hurt him to think a little frightened, and once, as it had thrilled him all through the night to remember, appealing. But he had not seen it smooth and calm as it was now. The attitude of both of them seemed to be reversed. It was she who was sure of herself, and he who was in perturbation.

"We'll have a long day together," she said. "We'll do whatever you like. Would you like to fish? If so, I'll be your gillie. I often land Dad's fish for him, and I know exactly what to do."

All he said was, "Yes, I should like that," but his voice trembled, and his happiness was almost too much for him. She was offering him that sweet confiding companionship which he had thought he would only attain to through long and troubled effort, when by difficult repression of his strong desires he should have taught her that she might safely give it to him. If he could have it now, offered to him of her own free-will, surely the rest would come! But he could wait; he could wait for a long time if he might have this.

To all outward seeming they might have been married for months, and reached that happy state in which perfect community of taste and understanding doubles the pleasure of any common pursuit, as they followed the stream and tempted the trout in its pools and shallows. Beatrix was as eager and interested as if she had been fishing with her father, and as merry and talkative. He loved her so like that, and was so happy with her that he sometimes forgot how much he loved her. He seemed to forget it altogether when at last he hooked a big fish, and drew it towards the bank, and she was not clever enough in manipulating her landing net. He ordered her about as if she had been a small boy, and rather a stupid one, and when the fish was landed and was lying on the grass with its gills opening and shutting, she burst out laughing. "If that's the way you're going to treat me!" she exclaimed.

She looked so adorable, her face flushed and her eyes sparkling, that all his prudent resolves vanished. He caught her and kissed her, just once, and let her go. "That's the way I'm going to treat you," he said, "and you've got to learn to put up with it."

She was taken by surprise. She looked at him, and then she smiled. "I think I shall learn in time," she said.