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seemed to smile ominously behind him and to say: ‘Hate me as much as you like:—but touch me at your peril.’

‘But I don’t hate you; you are straight; you mean to be kind; I don’t hate you,’ she felt herself repeating exorcisingly. And at last a merciful cloud covered her mind and she fell asleep.

On waking she found herself thinking of Celia. Her thoughts of Hester had run themselves dry and the obsessions of the night survived only in her sense of weight and weariness. It was Celia she must think of now, and Celia could hardly rejoice at the news she had to tell her. It was news that had best be broken carefully. So, after her orders were given, her letters written, she put on her hat and coat and took a stick and went out, remembering as she always remembered on starting on a walk, that Jeremy was not here to share it.

The rain had ceased but the day was blanketed in a thick mist that might, later on, lift and reveal a summer sky. Monica’s spirits revived a little as she walked, her feet slipping in mud, the hedgerow trees pattering down drops on her shoulders. The weight was there, and the sense of it was like a tendency to sickness underlying her vigour, but she had an eye for what the day could give and found a