With the passing of that gleam of moonlight it seemed to Reynold Harding that Mitchelhurst Place disappeared finally into the abyss that waits for all created things. Where the house, in its curious ghastly whiteness, had stood a moment earlier, was now nothing but baffling gloom, and the very gate vanished into the shadows, as if there were no need of any substantial barrier between him and the lost vision. The scene had closed with dramatic suddenness, and he felt that the play was played out, but how long he stood staring at the dusky curtain he did not know.

At last he turned, and made his way down the dim road. The bewildering obscurity seemed to press upon his sight, and he quickened his pace to gain the corner where his glance might rest on the scattered lamps of Mitchelhurst Street—little flames shuddering and struggling in the gale. He had gone about half the distance to his lodgings, when he saw two advancing eyes of fire at the end of the street. Nearer and nearer they came, but, owing to the clamour of the wind, the noise of wheels was inaudible till the carriage was close upon him where he paused on the sidewalk. Then for a moment there was a gleam of light upon the road, and in it appeared, as in a kind of magic-lantern picture, a sorry-looking grey horse, travelling reluctantly beyond his stable at the inn, a shabby driver, buttoned closely against the wind, with his hat pulled low on his brows, a flashing of revolving wheels, and the black silhouette of the Mitchelhurst fly. Harding looked after it till he saw the lamp shine for a moment, with sudden brightness, as the carriage turned, and then go out. After this fashion was Mr. Hayes, too, lost in the darkness which had swallowed everything else, and Reynold's gaze conveyed a not unkindly farewell.

The night gathered and deepened in the village, and the great starless dome bent its vaulted gloom over the half-dozen lights which glimmered on cottages and cabbage plots. Now and again a dog would bark, or the wind would pass with a wilder wail, and the sign of the Rothwell Arms would creak discordantly. The people to whom that little hollow was the world, lay close and safe in their houses, wakened, perhaps, by the gale to hope that no tiles would fall, and no damage be done in the gardens, listening drowsily for awhile, and then turning in their beds to sleep again.

It was not till the moon was low in the west that it broke once more through the clouds, and, peering in at a small uncurtained window, revealed the white face of a man who sat by it, with drooping head and listless hands. He was not asleep, but he did not move. With that same glance the moon espied St. Michael in the lancet window, sedulously trampling on his little dragon, while the old clock above his head recorded the passing of the hours with a labour of slow strokes. Those two, and those two only, did the moon see in all Mitchelhurst, and then vanished again and left them, till the wind went down, and the day came slowly over the grey fields, with a deluge of autumnal rain.

Mrs. Simmonds was sorry to lose her lodger, and sorry that the weather should be so bad, and that he should look so pale. She busied herself about his breakfast, and brought him the local paper with the air of a successful prophet.

"I told you there'd be another to-day, sir," she said as she laid it down, "and here it is!" Reynold briefly acknowledged the attention, but he never touched it. "So set as he was upon that other one!" said Mrs. Simmonds later to her husband.

Simmonds suggested that he might have found something that specially interested him in the other paper, somebody dead and leaving money, may be, or somebody mysteriously disappeared, or something—he looked as if he'd had a shock of some sort. But Mrs. Simmonds was inclined to think that he was most likely upset by the thought of his railway journey. She knew it was all she could do to swallow a bit, if she were going anywhere, with all her packing on her mind, and very likely the gentleman was of the same way of feeling. As to a shock, he hadn't got any shock out of the paper, she knew. He might have had some bad news in the letters Miss Strange brought him, for he told her with his own lips that they were very important, and that was why she came with them herself.

"You see, the old gentleman was out," said Mrs. Simmonds, "so I suppose she didn't know what to do."

"I shouldn't think the old gentleman would be best pleased," said Simmonds.

The good woman considered for a moment.

"Well, I sha'n't tell him," she announced finally.

Harding drove to the nearest station in a gig. The rain was not so heavy then, the downpour had become a persistent drizzle. Nevertheless the village looked drenched and dismal enough as he bade it good-bye, and swung round the corner of the churchyard wall, where the yellow weeds stood up in the crevices behind the slant grey veil, and the great black-plumaged yews let fall their heavy tears upon the graves. In another minute a clump of trees hid the square tower and the leaden roof, and Mitchelhurst was left behind. But the young man looked right and left at the wet hedgerows till they reached a spot where a ploughed field rose above the bank on one side, while on the other a deep bramble-grown ditch divided the road from the sodden meadows. He fixed his eyes on that. It was exactly a week that Wednesday since he first met Barbara Strange.

Late that afternoon he walked into a dull room in a dull suburb of London, and a woman who stood in the window, snipping the dead fronds from a homesick-looking fern, turned to meet him. There was no mistaking the relationship. Allowing for the differences of sex and age, they were as like as they could possibly be, except that in every glance and gesture the woman showed a fuller and richer life than did the man. There was something of imperious grace in her movements which made him seem awkward, hesitating, and constrained. She suffered him to touch her cheek with his lips, but showed no inclination to speak first.

"Back again, you see," he said, drawing a chair to the hearth-rug.

"Yes. I should think you must be wet."

"Damp, I suppose."

He glanced round the room. The flock paper, the red curtains, the grimy windows, the smoky fire, had the strange novelty which the most familiar things will sometimes put on. The atmosphere was loaded with acrid fog, and the blackness of the great city. He raised his foot and warmed a muddy boot, while his thoughts went back to the stateliness and airy purity of the old manor house, where the great logs cracked and glowed upon the hearths.

Mrs. Harding came and rested her elbow on the chimney-piece, looking down at her son.

"I left Mitchelhurst this morning," said he, after a pause.

"Yes? Well, I suppose you had seen enough of it."

"It was time to come home, anyhow," he said.

"You had business in town?"

The tone and words would have served as well for any chance visitor.

"Yes—naturally."

He put the other foot to the fire by way of a change.

"I did not know," said Mrs. Harding. "I have nothing to do with your business. It certainly isn't mine. You are always welcome to be here as much as you please, but of course you will attend to your own affairs."

Reynold made no answer.

"You are your own master," she continued, after a short silence. "I have recognised that for some years. I have not expected you to go my way."

"One must go one's own way, I suppose," said the young man.

"And if I expected you to show some slight consideration for me, in taking the way you have chosen—I was mistaken!"

He stirred the fire, and replaced the poker, but did not look at her or speak.

"You know what I mean?" she demanded.

"Perfectly."

"Reynold, you might have written! Your uncle's offer deserved a word. I do not say you might have accepted it, but you might have refused it courteously. Was that so much to ask? You have insulted him wantonly, and he will never pardon it. After all, he is your father's brother, and an old man. Reynold, you should have written!"

He did not raise his eyes from the burning coals.

"Well," he said, "I did propose to write before I went away."

She winced at the thrust.

"I was wrong!" she owned, with bitter passion in her voice. "It would have been better."

"As things have turned out," said Reynold, "I think it would."

Poor little Barbara! If that angry, dark-eyed woman had known how near the fulfilment of her hopes had been, and lost by how pitiful a chance? But the secret was safe.

Kate Harding drew a long breath.

"Well, I have no more to say about it. Perhaps it is best that we should understand each other. You knew how your silence would wound me; it was deliberate—it was calculated. Well, it has wounded me, I don't deny it. But it is all over now, and you will never wound me again. Do what you please, now and always—as you have done."

He signified his attention sullenly, with a slight movement of his head.

"It is all over," she continued. "The situation is filled up, and nothing would ever induce Robert Harding to suffer you to enter his office—not if you offered to sweep it! He will not trouble you any more, and, since the matter is ended, let it never be mentioned between us again."

It was easy to see that she was, as she had said, deeply wounded, and there was a tragical intensity in her speech. Her son made answer with the same mute gesture of assent.

Presently she moved away, and for a few minutes she busied herself about the room. She gathered up the leaves she had cut off, put away two or three things that were lying about, and then came back to him.

"Dinner will be ready at the usual time," she said, in a cold, everyday voice. "And then we can talk——of other things."

"Yes," Reynold answered, with a start, looking up from his reverie. He had been thinking of the evening before. When he went into the little sitting-room after his walk, and Barbara rose up from the sofa to meet him, he had been startled, she was confused and frightened, and they had forgotten the ordinary greetings. And then they had talked, he had sat looking at her, he had stood up and held himself aloof—how had he done it? Well, it had been for Barbara's sake. Afterwards they had gone through Mitchelhurst together. Together? No, absurdly apart, with the breadth of the street between them. And at last they had talked at the gate, and he had vexed her, and she had hurried away without a word of farewell. It seemed to him now that he had never meant that. It was impossible he could have meant it. Why, they had never shaken hands, he had never touched her, and he remembered that she had no glove on, he had seen her hand in the moonlight on the latch of the gate. She had said, "Let us part friends," he had only to consent.

It is well that we cannot recall our moments of temptation. Reynold had been able to pain her then with a jest, he had been strong enough in his bitterness of heart to let her go without a word, but now as he sat staring at the fire, idly clasping his knee, he regretted his strength. If he could have taken Barbara's hand he would, and the long fingers, loosely knit together, suddenly tightened at the thought. A woman's small hand would not have had much chance of escape from such a clasp as that.

But at that moment his mother aroused him from his musings.