And again, the utter yearning for confession and an unburdened soul came upon her intolerably. The religious psychologist describes such a crisis as "conversion," or "conviction of sin," or the "working of grace." And he knows from long experience that it is the result in the human soul not so much of a sense of evil, as of a vision of good. Goodness had been brought near to Rachel in the personality--the tender self-forgetting trust--of George Ellesborough. It was goodness, not fear--goodness, unconscious of any threatened wrong--that had pierced her heart. Then a thought came to her. _Janet!_--Janet whose pure and loving life beside her made yet another element in the spiritual forces that were pressing upon her. She sprang to her feet. She would tell Janet everything--put her poor secret--her all--in Janet's hands. XIII It was again a very still and misty night,--extraordinarily mild for the time of year. A singular brooding silence held all the woodlands above Great End Farm. There was not a breath of wind. Every dead branch that fell, every bird that moved, every mouse scratching among the fallen beech leaves, produced sounds disproportionately clear and startling, and for the moment there would be a rustle of disturbance, as though something or some one, in the forest heart, took alarm. Then the deep waters of quiet closed again, and everything--except that watching presence--slept. The hut in Denman Wood, which had formerly played a hospitable part as the scene of many a Gargantuan luncheon to Colonel Shepherd's shooting parties, had long been an abandoned spot. All the Colonel's keepers under fifty had gone to fight; and there was left only an old head keeper, with one decrepit helper, who shot the scanty game which still survived on strict business principles, to eke out the household rations of the big house. The Ipscombe woods were rarely visited. They were a long way from the keeper's cottage, and the old man, depressed by the difference between war and pre-war conditions, found it quite enough to potter round the stubbles and turnips of the home farm when game had to be shot. The paths leading through the underwood to the hut were now in these four years largely over-grown. A place more hidden and forgotten it would have been difficult to find. And for this reason, combined with its neighbourhood to Rachel Henderson's farm, Roger Delane had chosen to inhabit it.