Quite calmly and quietly Toni went about her preparations for departure.

The scene in the library had turned the scale in favour of her flight. Owen had openly avowed his opinion that their hasty marriage had been a mistake; and now that the passion of rage and jealousy which had possessed her had died away, Toni could see no other method of relieving the situation than by leaving Greenriver at once.

She would go away with Leonard Dowson, thereby leaving the way open for Owen to divorce her. Her own future life occupied but the smallest fraction of her thoughts. Somehow her power of visualizing the future seemed to stop short with her departure from her home; and although she had a very clear vision of Owen, relieved from the incubus of her presence, and free to devote himself to the work which, she had persuaded herself, meant more to him than any purely domestic happiness, she never gave even a passing thought to her own existence when once she had severed the ties which bound her to the old house by the river.

Very early in the morning of the day following her interview with Dowson she had posted a note to him. There was only one short sentence on the little sheet of paper—only three words; but she know it would be enough.

That was all; and yet as she wrote the little sentence, Toni had a queer, stifling sensation as though she were indeed signing her own death-warrant.

The note would be delivered at lunch-time; and about two o'clock Toni began to look for an answer, though she knew it was hardly likely the young man would reply so promptly.

At three o'clock she went out into the garden. Her head was throbbing painfully, her cheeks burnt with a scarlet flush, and it was surely quicksilver and not blood which ran so swiftly through her veins.

The day was unseasonably warm, and a slight fog hung about, making the air damp and heavy. Owen had gone to town immediately after lunch; and Toni was inexpressibly relieved by his absence.

They had barely spoken to one another to-day. Owen was suffering from one of his worst neuralgic headaches, which at all times made him feel disinclined for speech; and Toni said little because she had nothing to say.

At half-past three a note was delivered to her by a lad wheeling a bicycle; and when the messenger had withdrawn, Toni opened the grey envelope with fingers that shook. Inside she found a fairly long letter, which had evidently been written in haste, for the writing was untidy, and here and there a word was almost illegible.

"I can hardly believe you will come, Toni." So ran the letter in which Leonard Dowson accepted, the happiness promised to him. "It seems too good, too exceedingly, marvellously good to be true. Yet your little letter lies before me, and you are too kind, too sincere to deceive me. So it is true; and the sun has risen on my grey and lonely life. Then listen, Toni. I have made all preparations for my own departure to-night. I have paid off my servants, the rent, and left everything in order; and I am in possession of a sufficient sum of money in notes and gold to enable us to live for some months in peace on the Continent. Now comes the question of our meeting. I have ascertained that the night boat leaves Dover about eleven; and in order to cross to Calais, on the way to Paris, we must take the boat train from Victoria. I think it will be safer to motor up to town rather than risk meeting any acquaintances in the train; and a car will be waiting at the corner of Elm Lane at six o'clock. That will give us sufficient time to catch the train, and will be pleasanter than the other mode of travelling. With regard to your luggage, do not trouble to bring more than a dressing-case; for it will be my pleasure and privilege in future to provide you with all you may desire. I have still much to do, so will bid you farewell until the precious moment which brings you to my side."

He had evidently hesitated over his signature; there were one or two erasures; but at length he had written, his name firmly, without any attempt at a formal leave-taking.

For perhaps a minute Toni stared at the two words "Leonard Dowson"; and a chill, as of anticipatory dread, swept over her at the sight of that firm, clerkly handwriting.

Until this moment she had looked upon Leonard's proposal as the one and only means of setting Owen free. Once she had taken this step, had burned her boats, her husband would surely accept his freedom with a feeling of vast relief; and in spite of everything Toni had only one thought—that of Owen's good.

But suddenly she was afraid, with a purely human, selfish fear for herself. To what was she condemning herself by this unlawful flight? When once Owen had accepted her sacrifice, had set in order the machinery of the law which should give him his release, what would become of her? Would she be obliged to marry a man for whom she felt only a tepid friendship, unwarmed by the smallest coal from the fire of love? She had found life sad even when married to the man she loved; but what would it be to her as the wife of a man to whom she was almost completely indifferent?

Quite unconsciously Toni was exaggerating Owen's attitude towards his marriage, was accepting as his last word a few irritable sentences wrung from him by fatigue and annoyance at having seen the corrected proofs destroyed in a fit of childish temper on the part of his wife.

Far from regretting his marriage, Owen merely regretted Toni's unreasonableness in the matter of Miss Loder; and once that young woman was removed from the scene, Owen had no doubt that he and his wife would shake down again quite comfortably and forget the recent scenes between them.

But Toni, who always meant exactly what she said, and unconsciously expected the same sincerity of speech from others, had taken Owen literally; and although for a moment a flood of human weakness had overtaken her as she gazed at Leonard Dowson's firm signature, she never really faltered in her purpose.

When she had read the fatal letter once more, she went back into the house, and there she burned the document with almost mechanical forethought.

Then she went upstairs to her room and carefully packed her dressing-bag. She did not take very much. Somehow it seemed unnecessary to burden herself with many things; and when she had finished her packing and had hidden the bag in her capacious wardrobe, she went downstairs and sat by the drawing-room fire to wait until Kate saw fit to bring tea.

When, at the usual time, Kate entered, she moved across the room to light the lamps; but Toni sent her away with this part of her duty undone. To-night Toni wished to sit in the firelight. The fog had thickened in the last hour, and now it pressed against the windows like a chill, ghostly presence, hiding the garden, the river, the trees in thick and clammy folds. Looking across the room from her seat by the fire Toni shivered; and it seemed unkind of Fate to ordain that her last memories of Greenriver should be shrouded in the cold and creeping mist.

She turned back to the fire with a shiver; and sat gazing into the leaping flames, while her tea grew cold and the hands of the clock crept inexorably onwards.

At half-past five she must leave the house. True, the meeting-place was distant barely a quarter of a mile, but Owen might return early, and she had no desire to run the risk of meeting him.

A short cut over the fields would both shorten the way and minimize the danger of running into her husband; and Toni looked up, startled, when the silver clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour of five.

Only thirty minutes, and her life at Greenriver would come to an end. Never again would she roam through the beautiful old house, never sit in this charming, panelled room, with its ghostly yet alluring fragrance as of bygone lavender and roses. Never again would she wander in the garden, revelling in the beauties of colour and scent and form which made so lovely a picture in the glorious setting of turf and river. Never again would she stroll beneath the tall trees in the summer dusk, while the owls hooted eerily and the nightingale murmured luscious love-songs to the dreaming roses. The river would know her no more; never again would her feet tread the towing-path where in the early morning she had been used to saunter, with her faithful Jock by her side——

Ah! At the thought of Jock, Toni uttered a little cry. She had forgotten him until this moment—his dear canine image blurred by a mist of thoughts and tears; but now she remembered him only too well; and her heart was pierced by the thought of his fidelity—to be, alas, so poorly rewarded. Owen would be good to him, of course. He would be well fed and kindly treated, since everyone in the house had a soft corner for the jolly, riotous, affectionate Airedale; but he would miss his own loving mistress; and Toni could not bear to think of the wistful expression his honest brown eyes would wear when he found that she had apparently deserted him.

At that moment, almost as though her thought had called him to her, she heard him at the door. He did not scratch the panel, after the manner of many of his kind, but stood upright and rattled the handle with his nose; and Toni ran to open the door, feeling a positive criminal beneath the warmth and confidence of his greeting.

She took him to the fireplace and snuggled down with him on the thick fur rug on the hearth. She gave him his saucerful of tea, and fed him recklessly with macaroons; but Jock was uneasy beneath her ministrations.

There is no friend so quick to grasp a tense situation as a dog. Although Toni spoke in almost her usual voice, and fondled him with more than her usual affection, Jock knew quite well that there was something wrong.

Leaving the last macaroon untouched, he came and stood close by her side, looking up into her face with a puzzled, wistful expression, and presently he stood up on his hind legs and licked her face solemnly with his warm red tongue.

"Oh, Jock, you naughty boy," said Toni, between crying and laughter. "You know you're not allowed to kiss me! But—oh, Jock, darling, how I shall miss you!"

Two great tears fell on the dog's head; and others followed. In a minute Toni was weeping her heart out; and the dog, rendered still more uneasy by this behaviour, lifted up his voice in a melancholy whine.

Suddenly Toni dashed away her tears and started to her feet with a suddenness which almost upset Jock.

"Jock, it's no use going on like this. We're a couple of idiots—at least, I'm one, and you're a darling old stupid. But it's time to go, Jock. To go. Do you hear? I'm leaving Greenriver, Jock, leaving my home, my husband, everything I have in the world. I'm going away, Jock, going with a man I hardly know. I shall be called wicked, and I suppose I am; but I can't help it. I've got to go—but oh, Jock, how much easier it would be to die!"

She took a last look round the beautiful room, which like most rooms looked its best in the rosy firelight; and then she went slowly out, Jock pressing closely to her side.

Up the broad stairs she went. In the gallery the Ten Little Ladies burned bravely; and as she walked between them Toni could not see their tiny flames for the tears which blurred her sight.

Very slowly she entered her room, Jock pressing beside her all the time. It did not take long to don her thick fur coat and soft little hat. She remembered a veil, but at first forgot her gloves; and at the last moment she had to go back for the dressing-bag and for her purse, wherein reposed ten pounds given her by Owen some weeks earlier.

At last she was ready; and bag in hand she opened the door leading into the gallery and stood looking round her for one long, last moment.

Jock, puzzled, stood beside her, gazing anxiously into her face; but she did not notice him; and when at length she moved slowly away Jock fell back a pace and stole behind her down the long gallery.

The old house was very still. From the shut-off regions behind the green baize door came, now and then, the murmur of voices; but for the most part Greenriver lay hushed in lamp-lit, flower-scented silence.

Never had the big hall looked so attractive as now, in the mellow light of the wood fire on the capacious hearth. On the oval oak table a big jar of chrysanthemums stood out, white and copper and mauve, against the panelled wall; and a sombre corner was lightened by the pink and cream blossoms of a tall azalea sent in that morning by an attentive gardener.

Over everything lay the sense of a great peace and tranquillity. The oak settee with its big, bright cushions, the tapestries hung on the dark walls, the flowers, the books strewn here and there, the big tiger-skin hearthrug, the enormous basket-chairs covered, too, with skins of tiger and leopard—never had the hall looked so alluring, so safe, so inviting to its mistress as on this foggy autumn night when she was about to leave its shelter.

With a long shudder Toni descended the last step of the great staircase, and drifted slowly across the hall in the direction of the front door. Jock, following, pressed a little too closely against her, and turning, Toni saw, the faithful little friend whom she was about to leave gazing at her with a human appeal in his honest face.

"Take me! Let me go with you where you go! Why go out into the dim cold night alone, when you can have beside you one to protect you and give you love?"

She could almost fancy he said the words; and two great tears fell swiftly as she bent and patted him with her free hand.

"No, Jock darling, I can't take you." She sobbed as she spoke. "I must leave you behind—with all the other things I love."

Jock, understanding the finality of her tone, whined uneasily, and wagging his tail besought her to reconsider her decision. But Toni could bear no more. With a quick, passionate movement she opened the big door hurriedly, and, heedless of his whining, passed through blindly into the night, pulling the door to after her with the miserable, hopeless feelings of a traitor in her heart.

Pausing for an instant she heard Jock sniffing interrogatively beneath the door; and knew he was hoping desperately that it would open to give him freedom; but with the tears running down her face she went slowly down the steps and was swallowed up by the cold, wet fog which lurked, ghost-like, round the house.

Leonard Dowson was waiting for her, impatiently, feverishly, by the car; but one glance at her warned him that this was no time for lover-like protestations.

He helped her in, covering her with the big fur rug he had had the forethought to bring; and then, with a delicacy which could only have been taught him by love, he left her alone in the interior of the car and mounted the seat beside the chauffeur.

Even now he could hardly believe his good-fortune. With all his education, his later Socialistic tendencies, his conviction that one man was as good, primarily, as another, and that only brains and application counted in the race of life, he could never bring himself to look on Toni as an ordinary human being, inferior to him by reason of her sex, her less scientific brain, her lack of the power, mental and physical, which was, to him, the prerogative of manhood.

Other women he might judge contemptuously or admiringly, as the case might be. But he could never consider Toni as a woman like those others—possibly because to him she was not a woman, but—mystical distinction!—the woman. In a vague, unreasoning way he recognized Toni's limitations. She was not clever, not even what he called well-educated. She would never fill any important position in the world, would never shine in any public capacity, would never seek to usurp man's prerogatives, and would be content to live quietly in some little corner of the world without longing to dash into the battlefield of human desires and human conflicts, as other women were doing every day.

But through it all Toni was the one woman he loved, the woman who represented to him all that was loveliest and best of her sex; and this narrow-chested, narrow-minded and quite unattractive young dentist had this much of greatness in his soul, that he could love a woman completely.

The car was running smoothly through the streets of a little town when there was a loud report, which even Toni, roused from her half-dazed stupor, recognized as the bursting of a tyre; and the next instant Leonard appeared at the door of the car, concern and apprehension in his face.

"I am so sorry—one of the front tyres has burst, and the man will have to repair it as well as he can in the fog."

"Where are we?" asked Toni idly, seeing beyond the figure of Dowson a few blurred lights as of houses or shops.

"Luckily we are at Stratton," said Leonard more cheerfully. "Right in front of some sort of an hotel, too. Won't you come in a moment and get warm? It's too foggy and damp for you to wait out here."

Without speaking Toni threw aside the rug and stepped out of the car. The raw, chilly air pierced her to the bone, even through the thick fur of her coat; and she shivered as she stood there, looking pathetically young and slight to the eyes of the man beside her.

"Come into the 'Red Lion,' or whatever they call it." He put a hand, rather timidly, on her sleeve, and Toni allowed him to lead her towards the entrance of the hotel, whose lamps shone bravely through the fog, making blurred splashes of yellow light in the murky grey gloom.

Opening the door, Leonard led her into the cheery entrance hall; and the next minute a stout, motherly-looking woman bustled out of a small side-office, and asked what might be the visitors' pleasure.

Leonard explained that a slight accident to their car would delay them a few moments; and since the night was so inclement, he had persuaded the lady to come inside, in search of fire and lights.

The stout landlady grasped the situation immediately, and led the way up a short flight of stairs to a sitting-room on the first floor, where a bright fire burned, and thick red curtains, closely drawn, successfully excluded the clammy fog, and created an atmosphere of well-being and good cheer.

"Wouldn't the lady like a cup of tea or coffee, sir?" The woman had noted Toni's pallor. "It can be ready in a moment—and a sandwich or two as well?"

After consulting his watch and calculating they had time to spare, Leonard ordered coffee and sandwiches at once; and the woman withdrew in a smiling haste which seemed to betoken the desire to lose no time.

Toni had sunk into a chair by the fire, and was leaning forward holding her hands to the blaze. In her face was so patent a misery that for a moment Dowson's heart failed him and he stood staring at her with a sudden horrible conviction that in luring her from her home and husband he was doing a wicked and heartless action. In that illuminating moment he could almost have found the strength to give her up, to undo, as far as he might, this thing which he had done. And then common sense came to his aid. It was not the experiences of this night which had thinned the rounded curve of the girl's cheek, had brought the hopeless droop to the soft lips, the despair to the once-laughing eyes. It was rather the happenings of the months preceding this night, the months of her married life; and once again love and desire swept away scruples; and Leonard was ready to fight the whole world for possession of the woman he loved.

But somehow he could not stay in the room with that pathetic, appealing little figure. He racked his brains for an excuse to leave her for a moment or two; and suddenly the idea he sought came to him in a flash.

He had omitted to wire to Paris for rooms in the quiet little hotel he had selected for their stay; and although it was not a matter of vital necessity to do so, it would perhaps be just as well to make sure of them, so that there need be no troublesome delay on arrival. There was a post-office a hundred yards away, and he would only be gone for a few moments. He did not venture to approach Toni, but speaking from the door explained that he had forgotten to engage rooms in Paris, and if she would excuse him for a minute or two he would rectify the omission. She agreed gently, giving him a tired little smile; and he wasted no time in departing on his errand.

When the door had closed behind him, Toni came to herself with a long, slow shiver. Somehow until this moment she had not really understood all that her flight implied. She had been so intent upon Owen's welfare, that save for a few moments in the garden at Greenriver her own had been forgotten; and although she had accepted Leonard Dowson's proposal with an almost startling readiness, she had done so in the manner of one who, drowning, clutches at a straw.

She had known, of course, that there would be a price to pay; but she had not realized until this second how great that price would be. Somehow the very nature of Leonard's errand had brought the whole position home to her with almost overwhelming force; and suddenly Toni knew that she could not go on with the adventure she had undertaken so rashly.

She could not—could not—go to Paris with this man, who for all his devotion was a stranger to her. She could leave Owen, though it seemed like tearing her heart out of her breast to go. But she could not go away with another man.

Gone all at once was the glamour of her sacrifice. Although she knew that by carrying out her scheme to the bitter end she might set Owen free, it seemed to her at this moment that such freedom, so basely won, could never bring her husband the happiness she craved for him.

For the first time, too, the thought of self would not be banished. She saw the whole foolish, irrational, Quixotic scheme in its true light; and flesh and blood shrank from a surrender which had no faintest touch of love—or even passion—to dignify sordidness.

No. She could leave her husband—and in a sudden blinding flash of insight she knew she could not—now—go back to Greenriver; but she could not proceed farther on this shameful way.

To go to the hotel in Paris with this other man, to travel with him in the enforced intimacy of their dual solitude, to pass, for all she knew, as his wife when in reality she was the wife of the one man for whom the great mystic trinity of body, soul and spirit passionately craved—oh, no. She could not go on—and with the certainty came the need for haste.

Suddenly the only thing which seemed to matter in all the world was that she must be gone before Leonard Dowson returned. If once he came back and heard her decision, there would be scenes, reproaches, persuasions, a hundred emotions let loose; and Toni was guiltily conscious, through all her new-born resolution, that she was treating this man who loved her unfairly.

He had been gone five minutes—he might return at any second. Tip-toeing across to the window, Toni parted the red curtains and lifted a lath of the old-fashioned Venetian blind to peer through into the fog.

She could not see much. Outside the hotel she could just distinguish the blurred shape of the car, the lamps flaring yellowly in the mist; but the shops and houses opposite were blotted out by the curtain of fog; and she knew she risked running into the man from whom she longed, desperately, to escape.

Where she would go did not matter now. Plans must be made afterwards—now she had but one desire, to flee into the fog and be lost to sight.

She was actually moving towards the door when a thought struck her. Tearing a bit of paper from the fly-leaf of a book on the table, she took from the deep pocket of her coat a little pencil, and scribbled a message—as short, almost, as that which had announced to Leonard her previous decision.

"I can't go on with you. I am going. Toni."