He slept at Forfar that night, and pushed on again next morning; and as he saw the old house across the dip, and heard the purl of the burn at the end of his journey, something in his heart failed him. The liquid whisper of the water through the fine, rushlike grass spoke to him of childhood and of the time when there was no world but Ardguys, no monarch but Madam Flemington. He seemed to feel her influence coming out to meet him at every step his horse took. How could he tell his news? How could he explain what he had done? They had never touched on ethical questions, he and she. As he came up the muddy road between the ash-trees he felt the chilly throe, the intense spiritual discomfort, that attends our plunges from one atmosphere into another. It is the penalty of those who live their lives with every nerve and fibre, who take fervent part in the lives of other people, to suffer acutely in the struggle to loose themselves from an environment they have just quitted, and to meet an impending one without distress. But it is no disproportionate price to pay for learning life as a whole. Also, it is the only price accepted. He put his horse into the stable and went to the garden, being told that Madam Flemington was there. The day was warm and bright, and as he swung the gate to behind him he saw her sitting on a seat at the angle of the farther wall. She rose at the click of the latch, and came up the grass path to meet him between a line of espalier apple-trees and a row of phlox on which October had still left a few red and white blossoms. The eighteen years that had gone by since the episode of the manse gate-post had not done much to change her appearance. The shrinking and obliterating of personality which comes with the passing of middle life had not begun its work on her, and at sixty-one she was more imposing than ever. She had grown a great deal stouter, but the distribution of flesh had been even, and she carried her bulk with a kind of self-conscious triumph, as a ship carries her canvas. A brown silk mantle woven with a pattern of flower-bouquets was round her shoulders, and she held its thick folds together with one hand; in the other she carried the book she had been reading. Her hair was as abundant as ever, and had grown no whiter. The sun struck on its silver, and red flashes came from the rubies in her ears.