That night she knew that she must leave Dartmoor, and go somewhere where George Tanqueray could not follow her and find her. She was mortally afraid of him. He had tracked and hunted her down swiftly and more inevitably than any destroyer or pursuer.

In spite of him, indeed because of him, her passion for this solitude of the moors was strong upon her, and she planned to move on the next day into Somerset, to a place on Exmoor that she knew. She would leave very early in the morning before Tanqueray could come to her.

She lay all night staring with hot eyes at the white walls that held her. At daylight she dropped asleep and slept on into the morning. When she woke she faced her purpose wide-eyed and unflinching. Her fear was there also and she faced it.

She was down too late for any train that could take her away before noon, and Tanqueray might come now at any time.

She was so late that the day's letters waited for her on the window-sill. In her agitation she nearly missed seeing them. One was from Gertrude, fulfilling punctually her pledge, assuring her as usual that all was well. The other was from her brother-in-law, Henry. It was very brief. Henry, after expressing the hope that she continued to benefit by the air of Dartmoor, supposed that she would have heard that Hugh was suffering from a chill he had caught by motoring without an overcoat.

She had not heard it. She read Gertrude's letter again to make sure. Among all the things, the absolutely unnecessary things, that Gertrude had mentioned, she had not mentioned that. She had broken her pledge.

They kept things from her, then. Heaven only knew what they had kept.

She read Henry's letter again. There were no details, but her mind supplied them as it grasped the sense of what he had written. There rose before her instantly a vision of Hugh lying in his bed ill. He had a racing pulse, a flaming temperature. He was in for gastritis, at the least, if it was not pneumonia. She saw with intolerable vividness a long procession of terrors and disasters, from their cause, the chill, down to their remotest consequences. Her imagination never missed one.

And instantly there went from her the passion of her solitude, and the splendour of the moors perished around her like an imperfect dream, and her genius that had driven her there and held her let go its hold. It was as if it owned that it was beaten. She had no more fear of it. And she had no more fear of George Tanqueray.

Nothing existed for her but the fear that hung round Brodrick in his bed. This vision of calamity was unspeakable, it was worse than all the calamities that had actually been. It was worse through its significance and premonition than the illness of her little son; it was worse than the loss of her little dead-born daughter; it brought back to her with a more unendurable pang that everlasting warning utterance of Nina's, "With you—there'll be no end to your paying." Her heart cried out to powers discerned as implacable, "Anything but that! Anything but that!"

She had missed the first possible train to Waterloo, but there was another from a station five miles distant which would bring her home early in the evening. She packed hurriedly and sent one of the farm people to the village for a fly. Then she paced the room, maddening over the hours that she had still to spare.

Once or twice it occurred to her that perhaps, after all, Hugh was not so very ill. If he had been Henry would have told her. He would have suggested the propriety of her return. And Henry's brief reference to Dartmoor had suggested continuance rather than return.

But her fear remained with her. It made her forget all about George Tanqueray.

It was the sudden striking of ten o'clock that recalled to her her certainty that he would come. And he was there in the doorway before her mind had time to adjust itself to his appearance.

She fell on him with Hugh's illness as if it were a weapon and she would have slain him with it.

He stood back and denied the fact she hurled at him. As evidence supporting his denial, he produced his recent correspondence with the editor. He had heard from him that morning, and he was all right then. Jinny was being "had," he said.

He had not come there to talk about Brodrick, or to think about him. He was not going to let Jinny think about him either.

He had come early because he wanted to find her with all the dreams of the night about her, before her passion (he was sure of it) could be overtaken by the mood of the cool morning.

Jinny had begun to pack her manuscript (she had forgotten it till now) in the leather case it travelled in. She had a hat with a long veil on. Tanqueray's gaze took in all this and other more unmistakable signs of her departure.

"What do you think you're doing?" he said.

"I'm going back."

"Why?"

"Haven't I told you?"

Positively he had forgotten Brodrick.

He began all over again and continued, tenderly, patiently, with all his cold, ascendant, dispassionate lucidity, till he had convinced her that her fear was folly.

She was grateful to him for that.

"All the same," she said, "I'm going. I wasn't going to stay here in any case."

"You were going?"

"Yes."

"And do you suppose I'm going to let you go? After last night?"

"After—last—night—I must go. And I must go back."

"No. Remember what you said to me last night. We know ourselves and we know each other now as God knows us. We're not afraid of ourselves or of each other any more."

"No," she said. "I am not afraid."

"Well—you've had the courage to get so far, why haven't you the courage to go on?"

"You think I'm a coward still?"

"A coward." He paused. "I beg your pardon. I forgot that you had the courage to go back."

Her face hardened as they looked at each other.

"I believe after all," he said, "you're a cold little devil. You stand there staring at me and you don't care a damn."

"As far as damns go, it was you, if you remember, that didn't care."

"Are you always going to bring that up against me? I suppose you'll remind me next that you're a married woman and the mother of two children."

"We do seem rather to have forgotten it," she said.

"Jinny—that ought never to have happened. You should have left that to the other women."

"Why, George, that's what you said six years ago, if you remember."

"You are——"

"Yes, I know I am. You've just said so."

"My God. I don't care what you are."

He came to her and stood by her, with his face close to her, not touching hers, but very close. His eyes searched her. She stood rigid in her supernatural self-possession.

"Jinny, you knew. You knew all the time I cared."

"I thought I knew. I did know you cared in a way. But not in this way. This—this is different."

She was trying to tell him that hitherto his passion had been to her such a fiery intellectual thing that it had saved her—as by fire.

"It isn't different," he said gravely. "Jinny—if I only wanted you for myself—but that doesn't count as much as you think it does. If you didn't suffer——"

"I'm not suffering."

"You are. Every nerve's in torture. Haven't I seen you? You're ill with it now, with the bare idea of going back. I want to take you out of all that."

"No, no. It isn't that. I want to go."

"You don't. You don't want to own that you're beaten."

"No. It's simpler than that. I don't care for you, George, not—not as you want me to."

He smiled. "How do you think I want you to?"

"Well—you know."

"I know that I care so much that it doesn't matter how you care, or whether you care or not, so long as I can put a stop to that brutality."

"There isn't any brutality. I've got everything a woman can want."

"You've got everything any other woman can want."

She closed her eyes. "I'm quite happy."

---

She closed her eyes. "I'm quite happy."

---

"For heaven's sake be honest. What is the use of lying, to me of all people? Don't I know how happy you are?"

"But I am—I am, George. It's only this horrid, devilish thing that's been tacked on to me——"

"That beautiful, divine thing that God made part of you, the thing that you should have loved and made sacrifices to—if there were to have been sacrifices—the thing you've outraged and frustrated, and done your best to destroy, in your blind, senseless lust for what you call happiness. You've no right to make It suffer."

"They say suffering's the best thing that can happen to it."

"Not Its suffering. Your suffering is—the pain that makes you alive, that stings and urges and keeps you going—going till you drop. To feel the pull of the bit when you swerve on the road—Its road—to have the lash laid about your shoulders when you jib—that's good. You women need the lash more than we because you're more given to swerving and jibbing. Look at Nina. She was lashed into it if any woman ever was."

"She isn't the only one, George."

"I hope she isn't. God is good to the great artists sometimes, and he was good to her."

"Do you suppose Laura thinks so?"

"Laura's not a great artist."

"And do you suppose Owen was thinking of Nina's genius when he married Laura instead of her?"

"I don't think that Owen was thinking at all. It's not the thinkers who are tools in the hands of destiny, dear child."

His gaze fell on the manuscript she was packing.

"Jinny, you know—you've always known that you can't do anything without me."

"It seems as if I couldn't," she admitted.

"Well—be honest with me."

She looked at her watch. "There's not much time for me to be honest in, but I'll try."

She sat down. She meditated a moment, making it out.

"You're right. I can't do much without you. I'm not perfectly alive when you're not there. And I can't get away from you—as I can get away from Hugh. I believe I remember every single thing you ever said to me. I'm always wanting to talk to you. I don't want—always—to talk to Hugh. But—I think more of him."

It seemed to her that it was only now that she really made it out. Her fear had been no test, it threw no light on her, and it had passed. It was only now, with Tanqueray's passionately logical issue facing her, that she knew herself aright.

"There's another thing. I can't be sorry for you. I know I'm hurting you, and I don't seem to care a bit. You can't make me sorry for you. But I'm sorry for Hugh all the time."

"God forbid that you should be sorry for me, then."

"God does forbid it. It's not that Hugh makes me sorry for him; he never lets me know; but I do know. When his little finger aches I know it, and I ache all over—I think it's aching a bit now; that's what makes me want to go back to him."

"I see—Pity," said the psychologist.

"No. Not pity. It's simply that I know he needs me more than you do. That's why I need him more than I need you."

"Pity," he reiterated, with a more insistent stress.

"No."

"Never mind what it is, if it's something that you haven't got for me."

"It is something that I haven't got for you. There isn't time," she said, "to go into all that."

As she spoke he heard wheels grinding the stones in the upper lane, the shriek of the brake grinding the wheel, and the shuffling of men's feet on the flagged yard outside.

He shut the door and faced her, making his last stand.

"You know what you're going back to."

"I know."

"To suffer," he said, "and to cause suffering—to one—two—three—innocent people."

"No. Things will be different."

"They won't. We shall be the same."

She shook her head a little helplessly.

"At any rate," he said, "you won't be different."

"If I could—if I only could be——"

"But you can't. You know you can't."

"I can—if I give it up—once for all."

"What? Your divine genius?"

"Whatever it is. When I've killed that part of me I shall be all right. I mean—they'll be all right."

"You can't kill it. You can starve it, drug it, paralyze it, but you can't kill it. It's stronger than you. You'll go through hell—I know it, I've been there—you'll be like a drunkard trying to break himself of the drink habit."

"Yes. But some day I shall break myself, or be broken; and there'll be peace."

"Will there!"

"There'll be something."

She rose. The wheels sounded nearer, and stopped. The gate of the farmyard opened. The feet of the men were at the door.

---