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of that. I’d have had too much sense, once I had found it, to risk spoiling it. And now it’s spoiled. All spoiled.’

It was as if the word, in its different context, had passed from her mind to his. He stood there at the window, his back turned to her, leaning his face close to the pane as if to gaze out at the darkness that was all he had before him, and he gave a great sigh, like a tired child. Her heart rose up—to her lips—as she heard him. But it was full of thankfulness as well as of grief. ‘Not quite spoiled, dear Godfrey,’ she said, ‘or I should not be here.’ And he did not turn to her. He understood. ‘Do you remember,’ he said presently—the embers had fallen, an owl had hooted, the clock had struck, sadly, reluctantly; it was twelve o’clock—‘that talk we had—it’s only the other day, really, but it seems years ago—when you came here through the wood? I felt that I had reached the end of everything that day. It was like mildew creeping over me; and when I saw you sitting there, where you are now, I felt that you had too.’

Yet how far she had been on that distant day from having reached the end of things. Sitting quietly in her chair Monica saw again the bee-face of the engine coming round the curve. ‘And we