Anne took it up, and examined it by the light of the expiring candle. She saw a sad quiet face, with thick hair parted smoothly on either side of the forehead. It was a face which looked older than the one now bent over it. A disfiguring gown, fastened with a little tucker at the neck, concealed the long line of the throat. Except for the indication of a clear cut chin, and a mouth sweet, despite its sadness, there was no beauty, not even a suggestion of grace or charm in the picture. Anne replaced the photograph, and slowly shut the book. There was a look of terror on her face. She had called up a ghost--the ghost of her past self. Like a woman whose one idea is flight, she half rose, and for a moment glanced with frightened eyes about the room. Dawn was breaking. The eerie, grey light showed her the embroidered linen coverlet on her bed, the spindle-legged dressing-table which had once stood in the little white bedroom upstairs, the flowered curtains at the window, the bowl of sweet peas on the table at which she had been sitting. She drew a deep breath, and moved close to the window. The air thrilled with the voices of the birds. The trees were still motionless, as though waiting for the sun; and grey with dew, the meadows stretched away towards the dim horizon. In the rose-garden on the right, beneath the sheltering wall, the sun-dial glimmered white as pearl in the dawn-light. The candle flared up, and went out with a flicker. Anne turned, and groping her way in the half light, replaced the book in the drawer, and touched the spring which closed it. IV At four o’clock, Sylvia Carfax swung the gate of the Vicarage garden behind her, and stepped into the dusty road. It was nearly a mile to Fairholme Court, and the sun blazed in a sky of cloudless blue, and beat upon her shoulders protected only by a blouse of thin muslin. Sylvia was just twenty, tall slim, and, as Miss Page suggested very pretty. In her own mind Anne often wondered when she looked at the girl’s rich black hair, which made such a striking contrast to eyes blue as the sky, that from the shelter of the Vicarage and all it represented such a southern, opulent type of beauty should have emerged. To reach her destination Sylvia had to walk through the village, past the blacksmith’s, and past the baker’s shop, with its quaint carving over the entrance porch. Dymfield was an ideally beautiful village, to which even the doctor’s motor-car scarcely brought more than a hint of the rush and hurry and ugliness of much of modern life. In the gardens of the thatched cottages, summer flowers made a blaze of colour. Roses and honeysuckle clambered over porch and roof. The church, resting peacefully in the green sea of the churchyard, was like some great rock, stained with lichen, crumbling with age, beautiful in its decay.