Would he give her up? She had told him that all was at an end between them; but that was only pride--making a virtue of a necessity. Oh, no, no, he must not give her up! It was only six weeks since their first meeting, and though it would be untrue to say that since the meeting he had wholly possessed her thoughts, she had been capable all through them of that sort of dallying with the vicar which Janet thought unkind. She had been able to find plenty of mind for her work, and for the ambitions of her new profession, and had spent many a careless hour steeped in the sheer physical pleasure of the harvest. Yet, from the beginning, his personality had laid its grip on hers. She had never been able to forget him for long. One visit from him was no sooner over than she was calculating on and dreaming of the next. And as the consciousness of some new birth in her had grown, and sudden glimpses had come to her of some supreme joy, possibly within her grasp, so fear had grown, and anxiety. She looked back upon her past, and knew it stained--knew that it must at some point rise as an obstacle between her and him. But how great an obstacle? She was going to tell him, faithfully, frankly, all the story of her marriage--accuse her own rash self-will in marrying Delane, confess her own failings as a wife; she would tell no hypocritical tale. She would make it plain that Roger had found in her no mere suffering saint, and that probably her intolerance and impatience had contributed to send him to damnation. But, after all, when it was told, what could Ellesborough do but pity her?--take her in his arms--and comfort her--for those awful years--and her lost child? The tears rained down her cheeks. He loved her! She was certain of that. When he had once heard the story, he could not forsake her! She already saw the pity in his deep grey eyes; she already felt his honest, protecting arms about her. Ah--_but then_? Beyond that imagined scene, which rose, as though it were staged, before her, Rachel's shrinking eyes, in the windy darkness, seemed to be penetrating to another--a phantom scene in a dim distance--drawn not from the future, but the past. Two figures moved in it. One was herself. The other was not Roger Delane.