‘Perhaps. I don’t know. It depends,’ she whispered. Her face was still hidden, her arms firm in their strangling grip. ‘Oh yes, yes, Jennifer! Oh please! Why these mysteries? Jennifer--if--if there’s somebody else you’re fond of I don’t mind. Why should it make any difference to you and me? I’m not jealous.’ ‘I’ll write to you,’ repeated Jennifer, very wearily whispering. ‘Soon then, soon, Jennifer. Tell me how you are, what you’re going to do. Tell me if you go abroad, who--who you go with. Tell me everything. Because I shall wonder and wonder. I shall imagine all sorts of things.... Jennifer....’ ‘Hush, darling. I’ll be all right, I swear. And I swear that _directly_ everything gets clear I’ll write to you. And then we’ll see. You do trust me, don’t you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you must promise me to answer.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘But don’t write before I write to you.’ ‘No.’ ‘Good-bye, my darling.’ She let her arms fall to her sides. At the door Judith turned, forcing her mouth into a smile, but Jennifer was not looking at her. Once again, only the tangle of her hair was visible, burning in the lamplight. * * * * * The end of the term. There had been no word from Jennifer. She had vanished. But she was to be trusted: you had only to wait and she would write. Or was she not to be trusted? Her copper bowl stood on the table, and there seemed no other rumour of her left in the whole place, save on the tongues of people; and even they were sparing of her name, spoke it with doubt and hesitation. On the last day of term, Judith, peering a moment into the aching emptiness of Jennifer’s room, saw the cord of her old manly Jaeger dressing-gown lying in the grate. 12 Then, for months, there was nothing in life save work: a careful planning out of day and night in order that sleeping and eating and exercise might encroach as little as possible on the working hours. Soon, Midsummer term was back with unprecedented profusion of blossom on the fruit trees, buttercups in the meadows, nightingale choruses in the cedars and limes. But now it seemed neither exciting nor delightful to be kept awake till dawn by nightingales; for sleepless nights lowered your examination value. By day the two thrilling and unearthly pipe-notes of the cuckoo seemed a mechanical instrument of torture: you found yourself desperately counting the calls, waiting between each, with a shrinking of all the nerves, for the next to strike. Almost you resented the flowery orchards and meadows with their pagan-like riot of renewal. You noted them with a dull eye from behind the stiff ponderous academic entrenchment of your mind. But sometimes in the night, in dreams, the orchards would not be denied: they descended upon you and shook out fragrance like a blessing; they shone in pale drifts, in clouds, in seas,--all the orchards of England came before you, luminous and stirring beneath the moon.