She glanced at him with that new self-possession; she was maddening him, though not with the purpose he would have attributed to any other woman. How she eluded him! how she would perpetually elude him! and so hold him forever. He knew himself to be fastidious enough to esteem only that which he had lost, or could never hope to seize. “Clare,” he repeated, this time with a genuine despair. They went back into the house, where tea had been made ready; she noted his preparations, the honey, the girdle-cakes, the fruit and cream. He deprecated them, “A bachelor’s house....” “What could be better?” she replied; and had slipped from him once more. She ate heartily, borrowing a handkerchief to wipe the cream from her lips, unaccountably a child again, and a new bewilderment to him. He now felt that what he might have said to the woman of whom he had had a glimpse, he could not say to the child who trusted herself in his house, and he thought with baffled anger, how ably she managed her alternative of weapons. A spoonful of honey in one hand, and a cake in the other, she leaned forward, talking to him, he more helpless than ever, and she more completely in control. He dared not think of his house when her presence should have gone out of it; he wondered whether he would suffer least pain by returning to his sitting-room directly the gig had driven away, by going for a walk on the Downs and returning only after dusk, or by driving her himself back to the Manor House. The idea of her going at all was intolerable; perhaps he had been unwise to ask her to come; perhaps he had only been at his favourite trick of turning the knife in the wound. But she was speaking, she was saying, “I shall come again to see whether you have prepared our garden against the autumn.” By her movement he saw that she was about to take her leave; he leapt out of his own chair and stood over her, saying wildly, “Don’t go, Clare, don’t; how can I bear your going? don’t leave me again, stay with me a little longer, I can’t face the loneliness without you,” and a stream of incoherent ejaculations flooded from his lips, while his hands fumbled towards her, yet with a remnant of soberness he strove to restrain them. Clare looked at him calmly, with wondering eyes. “But I must go home if my father is not to be kept waiting for his dinner,” she said. Calladine stepped back instantly and released her. “I am sorry,” he said. “The loneliness, perhaps, gets a little on my nerves.” He passed his hand across his eyes. “You are the first visitor I have welcomed here for many years, and your presence threw me off my balance.” He tried to speak lightly. “Come, I will take you to the gig,” but still he lingered, looking to see whether she had left anything behind, in a last attempt to delay her. “Shall I drive you home?” he asked desperately.