That evening Teresa got no word alone with David.

The next morning at breakfast it was proposed that Dick, Concha and Rory, and Arnold, should motor to the nearest links, play a round or two, and have luncheon at the clubhouse; and David asked if he might go with them to “caddy.”

Harry and Guy had to leave by an early train.

The day wore on; and Teresa noticed that the DoÑa kept looking at her anxiously, in a way that she used to look at her when she was a child and had a bad cold.

In the afternoon she took a book and went down to the orchard; but she could not read. The bloom was on the plums; the apples were reddening.

At about four o’clock there was the sound of footsteps behind her, and looking round she saw David. He was very white.

“I’ve come to say good-bye,” he said.

“Good-bye? But I thought ... you were staying some days.”

“No ... I doubt I must be getting back. I told Mrs. Lane last night, I’m going by the five-thirty.”

He stood gazing down at her, looking very troubled.

“Why have you suddenly changed your plans?” she said, in a very low voice.

He gazed at her in silence for a few seconds, and then said, “I’m not so sure if I had any ... well, any plans, so to speak, to change ... at least, I hope ... but, anyway, I’m going ... now,” and he paused.

She felt as if she were losing hold of things, as in the last few seconds of chloroform, before one goes off.

“That play of yours ... that Don ... he was a great sinner,” he was saying.

“He repented,” she said, in a small, dry voice.

“After ... he’d had what he wanted. That’s a nice sort of repentance!” and he laughed harshly.

From far away a cock, then another, gave its strange, double-edged cry—a cry, which, like Hermes, is at once the herald of the morning and all its radiant denizens, and the marshaller to their dim abode of the light troupe of passionate ghosts: Clerk Saunders and Maid Margaret, Cathy and Heathcliff.

He laughed again, this time a little wildly: “Hark to the voice of one in the wilderness crying, ‘repent ye!’ Do you remember Newman’s translation of the Æterne Rerum Conditor? How does it go again? Wait ...

Something ... something ... wait ... how does it go....

Its rhythm, when his voice stopped, continued rumbling dully along the surface of her mind.... Once it wrought a great repenting in that flood of Peter’s tears.... Once it wrought a.... Funny! It was the same rhythm as a Toccata of Galuppi’s....

It would have to be “in that flood of Peter’s mind....” Not very good.... What was he saying now?

“I remember your saying once that the Scotch thought an awful lot about the sinfulness of sin.... I firmly believe that the power of remitting sin has been given to the priests of God ... but are we, like that knight, going to ... well to exploit, that grand expression of God’s mercy to His creatures, the Sacrament of Penance? Well? So you don’t think that knight was a bad man?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said wearily. “Good, bad ... what does it all mean?”

“You know fine what it all means. You wrote that play,” a ghost of a smile came into his eyes. “Well ... I suppose ... it’s getting late ...” he sighed drearily, and then held out his hand.

For a few seconds she stood as if hypnotised, staring at him. Then in a rush, the waste, the foolishness of it all swept over her.

“David! David!” she cried convulsively, seizing his arm. “David! What is it all about? Don’t you see?... there’s you, here’s me. Plasencia’s up there where we’ll all soon be having tea and smoking cigarettes. Oh, it’s a plot! it’s a plot! Don’t be taken in ... why, it’s mad! You’re not going to become a priest!” Then her words were stifled by hysterical gasps.

He took hold firmly of both of her wrists. “Hush, you wee thing, hush! You’re havering, you know, just havering. You—Sister Pilar—you’re not going to try and wreck a vocation! You’d never do that! You know fine that there’s nothing so grand as sacrifice—to offer up youth and love to God. It’s not a sacrifice if it doesn’t cost us dear. I don’t think, somehow, that a bread made of wheat would satisfy you and me long. Remember, my dear, this isn’t everything—there’s another life. Hush now! Haven’t you a handkerchief? Here’s mine, then.”

With a wistful smile he watched her wipe her eyes, and then he said, “Well, I doubt ... I must be going. The motor will be there. God bless you ... Pilar,” he looked at her, then turned slowly and walked away in the direction of the house.

She made as if to run after him, and then, with a gesture of despair, sank down upon the ground.

Well, it was over. She had shut up Life into a plot, and there had been a counterplot, the liturgical plot into which Rome compresses life’s vast psychic stratification; and, somehow or other, her plot and the counterplot had become one.

Why had he looked so happy when he arrived—only yesterday? Was it joy at the thought of so soon saying his first mass? She would never know. The dead, plotting through a plot, had silenced him for ever.

Oh, foolish race of myth-makers! Starving, though the plain is golden with wheat; though their tent is pitched between two rivers, dying of thirst; calling for the sun when it is dark, and for the moon when it is midday.

The sun was setting, and the shadows were growing long. Some one was coming. It was the DoÑa, looking, in the evening light, unusually monumental, and, as on that September afternoon last year when the children were clinging round her skirts, symbolic. But now Teresa knew of what she was the symbol.

She came up to her and laid her hand on her head. “Come in, my child; it’s getting chilly. I’ve had a fire lit in your room.”

Paris,
4 rue de Chevreuse,
1923.