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Norah intends a border under the wall, I believe. Come and look at it,’ he repeated, opening a small wicket-gate in the hedge.

Monica hesitated, a strange apprehension seizing her mind as she stood beside Captain Ingpen in the sombre wood and looked at the ochre-coloured house. Those sluggish streams had been Lethes; to pass through the hedge would be to forget the past; and though Clive was taken from her irretrievably, memory was precious; she had come to the end of everything except memory—was not that always the fate of the old? And if she passed through the wicket with Captain Ingpen, would she not jeopardize her one possession? It would be like entering a new life. And she had nothing to do with new lives.

His eyes were on her, and as she raised her own she thought that she detected in their narrow scrutiny a mocking challenge: ‘Are you afraid?’ did they not say? ‘of me? and of the difference that I may make?’ It was childish to harbour such fancies. Her courage, her sense of humour rose to answer him. ‘Yes, I must look at it,’ she said, and she went through the hedge and walked beside him up the gravel path.

The side of the house that gave on the wood was