She tried to be blind to this new light in her sky. She told herself that it had nothing to do with her, that she must not, in pride, in decency, let her thoughts be concerned with him.... But Justin was coming home!... She had no right, she reminded herself fiercely, to be sorry or glad any more for Justin.... But at least he would be safe.... For a whole week he would be safe.... She might sleep sound, if she could, for a whole week.... She need not even pray.... All she might do—all she could do—for a Justin safely home again, was to keep out of his way.... He would not want to see her.... She would not afford him, or herself, the embarrassment of a meeting.... She would not spoil his holiday by appearing to exist.... She thought that she ought to go away altogether—pay some invented visit to imaginary relatives.... But that she could not do.... That—probing her soul—she could not do.... She found she had not, literally, the strength to leave Brackenhurst when Justin was coming home. But she would keep out of his way.... Not that it would upset Justin if he did run into her.... He would pass her—she could see him—as carelessly as he might pass some futile cur that had once snapped at him.... He would have put her out of his mind by now, definitely and completely.... She knew his indifferent, inexorable way.... She had bruised herself often enough against his unimagination, his sturdy mind that was like a house with one window. Oh, he saw life clearly through it—but how little he saw! But there was no use in going over that.... All she had to remember was to keep out of his way.... But she would not leave Brackenhurst.... For if Justin—suppose that Justin—suppose that by some miracle Justin had changed—had learned to forgive—to forget—to want her again! Miracles did happen.... You are right—she cannot, at the time of his leave, have been quite sane. For, all the long week, she lived, fiercely as she denied it to herself, in mad, fantastic expectation of that miracle. Every passer-by on the long road, every click of the gate, every bell rung in the kitchen, every footstep on the gravel, from the paper-boy before the maids came down to the gardener going home at night, was Justin—was Justin! Fifty times in the weary day the impossible happened, the miracle was vouchsafed, and Justin came to her—Justin, who never came. In the window-seat, above the white high-road, where, so many years ago, she had watched for the coming of another love, she crouched again and peered out at the passers-by, and starved and starved for him.