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I was almost dinner-time. Miriam received her back calmly and told her that no one had called. ‘But you've been too far, Ma’am,’ she observed, and Monica agreed to go to bed again and have hot milk and brandy. Already she was in a half dream when Miriam brought it and very soon, after drinking it, she fell asleep, her mind empty of every image.

When she woke it was late. Her room was dark and all was still. She lighted her candle and saw that her clock stood at half-past ten. The maids had gone to bed. Across the green, on its hill side, Clive and Hester, up at The Crofts, were, she hoped, sleeping peacefully. Hester would never tell Clive the truth about the afternoon; that would be to grieve him too terribly; but she would have told him that his mother could never again hurt him as she had done. All would be well with the young lives. And, suddenly, in the apathy of release, of reconstruction, a memory, an image, shot into her mind. She saw Ingpen’s head, dark against the sky, looking in at her through the window.

With the memory, a dreadful distress filled her; a