But Dymfield meant Fairholme Court, to which her heart was inextricably linked. The garden that she had planted, the garden that was full of fragrant memories of the blossoming time of her life. The bare idea of leaving it sent a pang of desolation to her heart. She got up and began to walk restlessly about the room. The absurdity of such an outcome of malicious gossip, struck her with a pathetic desire to laugh. “After all these years! At my age,” she murmured. She thought of her three years of happiness, the little space of time which had opened like a flower in her grey life, and wondered pitifully why any one should grudge it to her. But most of all, she shrank from the thought that people should talk about it. It had been for so many years her secret possession, the memory that had sweetened all her later days. It would be insupportable to know that her acquaintances were gossiping about her. About her and René. A painful flush rose to her face as she sat down again by the fire. After her talk with Madge Dakin, her old life seemed too near. She thought of the parting with René in the morning--the morning he left her for his three days’ work at Fontainebleau. The agony of making that parting a light one! She remembered that he turned at the door, and came back to kiss her again. The sun was on his hair, as he crossed the room. Involuntarily to-night, twenty years after the words were spoken, Anne put her hands over her ears, that she might not hear his voice. But she knew what he had said. She remembered how, when he was gone, her resolution wavered. Without question he loved her still. Wasn’t it too soon? Might she not stay a little longer? Just a little while longer? And then the _bonne_ had brought the letters of the second post, and among them there was one for René in a handwriting she knew. Within the past month they had been coming very often, these letters. Lately, every day. She remembered how the sunshine had streamed upon the envelope at which she sat staring, till at last she moved to make her preparations. Then the long train journey, and the agony which feared to betray itself in some insane fashion which might cause her to be stopped--forcibly prevented from reaching her destination. She wanted to shriek aloud, to rave and cry, like the madwoman she half feared she might in fact have become. Of the next few weeks she recalled nothing but a confused nightmare impression of unfamiliar rooms, strange faces, strange voices. Of people who for some mad reason were going about as usual, occupied with the ordinary business of life; talking, laughing, eating and drinking, unmoved, unconcerned. One book on every hotel table drew her like a magnet. She would sit down anywhere with a _Bradshaw_ before her, and at once, mechanically plan her journey back to Paris. Over and over again, she looked out trains, studied connections, pictured the moment of her arrival.