Labour was scarce and the entire management had fallen upon her own shoulders. Anthony’s duties had confined him to Millsborough. For years they had seen one another only for a few hours at a time. There had been no opportunity for intimate talk. It was not until her return home to The Abbey that her fear had come back to her. There was no definable reason. It was as if it had always been there--a presence, waiting its time. One evening, walking in the garden, she had seen him standing there by the latchet gate, and had crept back into the house. She had the feeling that it would be there, by the latchet gate, that he would tell her. So long as she could avoid meeting him there she could put it off, indefinitely. The surer she felt of it, the more important it seemed to her to put it off--for a little while longer: she could not explain to herself why. It was when, without speaking, he had pressed her to him so close that she had felt the pain in his body, that she knew the time had come for her to face it. What answer was she to make him? It seemed such a crazy idea. To give up The Abbey. To think of strangers living there. It had been the home of her people for five centuries. Their children had been born there. For twenty years they had worked there lovingly together to make it more beautiful. It would be like tearing oneself up by the roots. To turn one’s back upon the glorious moors--to go down into the grimy sordid town, to live in a little poky house with one servant; presuming the Higher Christianity permitted of even that. Yes, they would get themselves talked about: no doubt of that. To do her own shopping. She had noticed them--passing them by swiftly in her shining car--tired women, carrying large network bags bulging with parcels. Some of them rode bicycles. She found herself wondering abstractedly whether she would be able to afford a bicycle. She had learnt to ride a bicycle when a girl. But that was long ago. She wondered whether she would be able to pick it up again. She pictured herself bargaining outside the butchers’ shops, examining doubtful looking chickens--when chickens were cheap. There was a particular test you had to apply. She would have to make enquiries. She could see the grinning faces of the tradesmen, hear their oily tongues of mock politeness. Her former friends and acquaintances--county folk who had motored in for a day’s shopping, the stout be-jewelled wives of the rich magnates and manufacturers of Millsborough. Poor ladies! how worried they would be, not knowing what to do, meeting her by chance in the street. She with her umbrella and her parcels. And their red-faced husbands who would squeeze her hand and try to say the right thing. There would be plenty of comedy--at first, anyhow. That was the trouble. Tragedy she could have faced. This was going to be farce.