Her attitude was incomprehensible to Peter. It seemed to him to be wrong-headed and absurd, and he began to lose patience with her. On his last morning he sought and found her beside the sun-dial in the wrens' garden. Meg had taken little Fay to see Lady Mary's Persian kittens, but Tony preferred to potter about the garden with the aged man who was trying to replace Earley. William was not allowed to call upon the kittens, as Fatima, their mother, objected to him vehemently, and Tony cared to go nowhere if William might not be of the party. Peter came to Jan and took both her hands and held them. "It's the last time I shall ask you, my dear. If you care enough, we can have these last days together. If you don't I must go, for I can't bear any more of this. Either you love me enough to marry me before I sail or you don't love me at all. Which is it?" "I do love you, you know I do." "Well, which is it to be?" "Peter, dear, you must give me more time. I haven't really faced it all. I can't do anything in such a hurry as that." Peter looked at her and shook his head. "You don't know what caring is," he said. "I can't stand any more of this. Do you see that motto on the sun-dial: 'I bide my time'--I've read it and read it, and I've said it over to myself and waited and hoped to move you. Now I can't wait any more." He kissed her, dropped her hand, and turning from her went out through the iron gate and down the drive. For a moment Jan stood by the sun-dial as though she, too, were stone. Then blindly she went up the steps into the empty nursery and sat down on an old sofa far back in the room. She leaned face-downward against the cushions, and great, tearing sobs broke from her. Peter was gone. He would never come back. She had driven him from her. And having done so she realised that he was the one person in the world she could not possibly do without. Tony's own hen had laid an egg. Carrying it very carefully in a cabbage-leaf, he went, accompanied by the faithful William, to show it to Auntie Jan, and was just in time to see Peter going down the drive. He went through the wrens' garden and in by the window. For a moment he didn't see his aunt; and was turning to go again when a strange sound arrested him, and he saw her all huddled up at the head of the sofa, with hidden face and heaving shoulders. He laid his egg on the table and went and pulled at her arm. "What is the matter?" he asked anxiously. "And why has Peter gone?" Jan raised her head; pride and shame and self-consciousness were dead in her: "He's gone," she sobbed. "He won't come back, and I shall never be happy any more," and down went her head again on her locked arms. Tony did not attempt to console her. He ran from the room, and Jan felt that this was only an added pang of abandonment.