Darkness fell, and the ploughed fields went wheeling and slipping by, the smoke-white evening vapours laid low and heavy over their dim chill violet expanses. She was going home again to be alone. She smiled, thinking suddenly that she might be considered an object for pity, so complete was her loneliness. One by one they had all gone from her: Jennifer the last to go. Perhaps Jennifer had never for an instant meant to come back; or perhaps her courage had failed her at the last moment. Wise Jennifer shed her past as she went along; she refused to let it draw her back to face its old coils and perplexities and be tangled in them once again. She did not want to return to Judith and love her and be troubled by her once more; or else return to find that all was different, that in this ten months’ interval life had separated them beyond hope of reunion. Yes, Jennifer had escaped again. She had never intended to come back. Yet it was impossible to feel self-pity. Perhaps it was the train’s monotonous reiterated motion and murmur that benumbed the mind, soothing it to a state that seemed like happiness. When she reached home she would find that the cherry-tree in the garden had been cut down. This morning she had seen the gardener start to lay the axe to its dying trunk. Even the cherry-tree would be gone. Next door the board would be up: For Sale. None of the children next door had been for her. Yet she, from outside, had broken in among them and taken them one by one for herself. She had been stronger than their combined force, after all. She was rid at last of the weakness, the futile obsession of dependence on other people. She had nobody now except herself; and that was best. This was to be happy--this emptiness, this light uncoloured state, this no-thought and no-feeling. She was a person whose whole past made one great circle, completed now and ready to be discarded. Soon she must begin to think: What next? But not quite yet. THE END Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: visit once every holidays=> visit once every holiday {pg 18} He sat on table=> He sat on the table {pg 79} shoulders wtih=> shoulders with {pg 112} sense if impotence=> sense of impotence {pg 183} and I a guant=> and I a gaunt {pg 326} scribbed all but illegibly=> scribbled all but illegibly {pg 335}