She had been there for some time when the sound of a footstep on the gravel outside made her start. It was followed by a knock at the door, which she herself opened almost before the summons. She came back to the room, immediately followed by a tall man in clerical dress. The suppressed excitement which had been in Mrs. Blencarrow’s aspect all the day had risen now to an extraordinary height. She was very pale, with one flaring spot on either cheek, and trembled so much that her teeth were with difficulty kept from chattering against each other. She was quite breathless when she took her seat again, once more supporting her head in her hands.

The clergyman was embarrassed, too; he clasped and unclasped his hands nervously, and remarked that the night was very cloudy and that it was cold, as if, perhaps, it had been to give her information about the weather that he came. Mr. Germaine giving her his views about the night, and Mrs. Blencarrow listening with her face half hidden, made the most curious picture, surrounded as it was by the bare framework of this out-of-the-way room. She broke in abruptly at last upon the few broken bits of information which he proceeded to give.

‘Do you guess why I sent for you, Mr. Germaine?’

The Vicar hesitated, and said, ‘I am by no means sure.’

‘Or why I receive you here in this strange place, and let you in myself, and treat you as if you were a visitor whom I did not choose to have seen?’

‘I have never thought of that last case.’

‘No—but it is true enough. It is not an ordinary visit I asked you to pay me.’ She took her hands from her face and looked at him for a moment. ‘You have heard what people are saying of me?’ she said.

‘Yes, but I did not believe a word. I felt sure that Kitty only meant to curry favour at home.’

She gave him a strange, sudden look, then paused with a mechanical laugh. ‘You think, then,’ she said, ‘that there are people in my own county to whom that news would be something to conciliate; something—something to make them forgive?’

‘There are people everywhere who would give much for such a story against a neighbour, Mrs. Blencarrow.’

‘It is sad that such a thing should be.’ She stopped again, and looked at him once more. ‘I am going to surprise you very much, Mr. Germaine. You are not like them, so I think I am going to give you a great shock,’ she said.

She had turned her face towards him as she spoke; the two red spots on her cheeks were like fire, yet her paleness was extreme; they only seemed to make this the more remarkable.

In the momentary silence the door opened suddenly, and someone came in. In the subdued light afforded by the shaded lamp it was difficult to see more than that a dark figure had entered the room, and, crossing over to the further side, sat down against the heavy curtains that covered the window. Mrs. Blencarrow made the slightest movement of consciousness, not of surprise, at this interruption, which, indeed, scarcely was an interruption at all, being so instantaneous and so little remarked. She went on:

‘You have known me a long time; you will form your own opinion of what I am going to tell you; I will not excuse or explain.’

‘Mrs. Blencarrow, I am not sure whether you have perceived that we are not alone.’

She cast a momentary glance at the new-comer, unnecessary, for she was well aware of him, and of his attitude, and every line of the dark shadow behind her. He sat bending forward, almost double, his elbows upon his knees, and his head in his hands.

‘It makes no difference,’ she said, with a slight impatience—‘no difference. Mr. Germaine, I sent for you to tell you—that it was true.’

‘What!’ he cried. He had scarcely been listening, all his attention being directed with consternation, almost with stupefaction, on the appearance of the man who had come in—who sat there—who made no difference. The words did not strike him at all for the first moment, and then he started and cried in his astonishment, ‘What!’ as if she had struck him a blow.

Mrs. Blencarrow looked at him fixedly and spoke slowly, being, indeed, forced to do so by a difficulty in enunciating the words. ‘The story you have heard is—true.’

The Vicar rose from his chair in the sudden shock and horror; he looked round him like a man stupefied, taking in slowly the whole scene—the woman who was not looking at him, but was gazing straight before her, with those spots of red excitement on her cheeks; the shadow of the man in the background, with face hidden, unsurprised. Mr. Germaine slowly received this astounding, inconceivable thought into his mind.

‘Good God!’ he cried.

‘I make no—explanations—no—excuses. The fact is enough,’ she said.

The fact was enough; his mind refused to receive it, yet grasped it with the force of a catastrophe. He sat down helpless, without a word to say, with a wave of his hands to express his impotence, his incapacity even to think in face of a revelation so astounding and terrible; and for a full minute there was complete silence; neither of the three moved or spoke. The calm ticking of the clock took up the tale, as if the room had been vacant—time going on indifferent to all the downfalls and shame of humanity—with now and then a crackle from the glowing fire.

She said at last, being the first, as a woman usually is, to be moved to impatience by the deadly silence, ‘It was not only to tell you—but to ask, what am I to do?’

‘Mrs. Blencarrow—I have not a word—I—it is incredible.’

‘Yes,’ she said with a faint smile, ‘but very true.’ She repeated after another pause, ‘What am I to do?’

Mr. Germaine had never in his life been called upon to face such a question. His knowledge of moral problems concerned the more primitive classes of humanity alone, where action is more obvious and the difficulties less great. Nothing like this could occur in a village. He sat and gazed at the woman, who was not a mere victim of passion—a foolish woman who had taken a false step and now had to own to it—but a lady of blameless honour and reputation, proud, full of dignity, the head of a well-known family, the mother of children old enough to understand her downfall and shame, with, so far as he knew, further penalties involved of leaving them, and every habit of her life, and following the man, whoever he was, into whatsoever wilderness he might seek. The Vicar felt that all the ordinary advice which he would give in such a case was stopped upon his lips. There was no parallel between what was involved here and anything that could occur among the country folk. He sat, feeling the problem beyond him, and without a word to say.

‘I must tell you more,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow. At her high strain of excitement she was scarcely aware that he hesitated to reply, and not at all that he was so much bewildered as to be beyond speech. She went on as if she had not paused at all. ‘A thing has happened—which must often happen; how can I tell you? It has been—not happy—for either. We miscalculated—ourselves and all things. If I am wrong, I am—subject—to contradiction,’ she said, suddenly stopping with a gasp as if for breath.

The shades of the drama grew darker and darker. The spectator listened with unspeakable excitement and curiosity; there was a silence which seemed to throb with suspense and pain; but the figure in the background neither moved nor spoke—a large motionless figure, doubled upon itself, the shaggy head held between the hands, the face invisible, the elbows on the knees.

‘You see?’ she said, with a faint movement of her hands, as though calling his attention to that silence. There was a painful flicker of a smile about her lips; perhaps her pride, perhaps her heart, desired even at this moment a protest. She went on again: ‘It is—as I say; you will see how this—complicates—all that one thinks of—as duty. What am I to do?’

‘Mrs. Blencarrow,’ said the clergyman—then stopped with a painful sense that even this name could be no longer hers, a perception which she divined, and responded to with again a faint, miserable smile—‘what can I say to you?’ he burst out. ‘I don’t know the circumstances; what you tell me is so little. If you are married a second time——’

She made a movement of assent with her hand.

‘Then, of course—it is a commonplace; what else can I say?—your duty to your husband must come first; it must come first. It is the most primitive, the most fundamental law.’

‘What is that duty?’ she said, almost sharply, looking up; and again there was a silence.

The clergyman laboured to speak, but what was he to say? The presence of that motionless figure in the background, had there been nothing else, would have made him dumb.

‘The first thing,’ he said, ‘in ordinary circumstances—Heaven knows I speak in darkness—would be to own your position, at least, and set everything in its right place. Nature itself teaches,’ he continued, growing bolder, ‘that it is impossible to go on living in a false position, acting, if not speaking, what can be nothing but a lie.’

‘It is commonplace, indeed,’ she cried bitterly, ‘all that: who should know it like me? But will you tell me,’ she said, rising up and sitting down in her excitement, ‘that it is my duty to leave my children who want me, and all the work of my life which there is no one else to do, for a useless existence, pleasing no one, needed by no one—a life without an object, or with a hopeless object—a duty I can never fulfil? To leave my trust,’ she went on, coming forward to the fire, leaning upon the mantelpiece, and speaking with her face flushed and her voice raised in unconscious eloquence, ‘the office I have held for so many years—my children’s guardian, their steward, their caretaker—suppose even that I had not been their mother, is a woman bidden to do all that, to make herself useless, to sacrifice what she can do as well as what she is?’

She stopped, words failing her, and stood before him, a wonderful noble figure, eloquent in every movement and gesture, in the maturity and dignity of her middle age; then suddenly broke down altogether, and, hiding her face, cried out:

‘Who am I, to speak so? Not young to be excused, not a fool to be forgiven; a woman ashamed—and for no end.’

‘If you are married,’ said the Vicar, ‘it is no shame to marry. It may be inappropriate, unsuitable, it may be even regrettable; but it is not wrong. Do not at least take a morbid view.’

She raised her drooping head, and turned round quickly upon him.

‘What am I to do?’ she said. ‘What am I to do?’

The Vicar’s eyes stole, in spite of himself, to the other side of the room. The dark shadow there had not moved; the man still sat with his head bent between his hands. He gave no evidence that he had heard a word of the discussion; he put forth no claim except by his presence there.

‘What can I say?’ said Mr. Germaine. ‘Nothing but commonplace, nothing but what I have already said. Before everything it is your duty to put things on a right foundation; you cannot go on like this. It must be painful to do, but it is the only way.’

‘It is seldom,’ she said, ‘very seldom that you are so precise.’

‘Because,’ he said firmly, ‘there is no doubt on the subject. It is as clear as noonday; there is but one thing to do.’

Mrs. Blencarrow said nothing; she stood with a still resistance in her look—a woman whom nothing could overcome, broken down by circumstances, by trouble, ready to grasp at any expedient; yet unsubdued, and unconvinced that she could not struggle against Fate.

‘I can say nothing else,’ the Vicar repeated, ‘for there is nothing else to say; and perhaps you would prefer that I should go. I can be of no comfort to you, for there is nothing that can be done till this is done—not from my point of view. I can only urge this upon you; I can say nothing different.’

Again Mrs. Blencarrow made no reply. She stood so near him that he could see the heaving of strong passion in all her frame, restrained by her power of self-command, yet beyond that power to conceal. Perhaps she could not speak more; at least, she did not. Mr. Germaine sat between the two, both silent, absorbed in this all-engrossing question, till he could bear it no longer. He rose abruptly to his feet.

‘May God give you the power to do right!’ he said; ‘I can say no more.’

Mrs. Blencarrow followed him to the door. She opened it for him, and stood outside on the threshold in the moonlight to see him go.

‘At least,’ she said, ‘you will keep my secret; I may trust you with that.’

‘I will say nothing,’ he replied, ‘except to yourself; but think of what I have said.’

‘Think! If thinking would do any good!’

She gave him her hand, in all the veins of which the blood was coursing like a strong stream, and then she closed the door behind him and locked it. During all this time the man within had never stirred. Would he move? Would he speak? Or could he speak and move? When she went back——