But then there was Henry. He was lost to her, indeed, and the husband of another woman; yet, if she deserted him now, what would become of him? His career was before him a long and happy career and it was pitiable to think that within some few minutes he might be lying in the grass murdered for her sake by a wretched lunatic. And yet, if she offered herself up for him, what must be the end of it? It would be that after a period of shock and disturbance his life would fall back into its natural courses, and, surrounded by the love of wife and children, he would forget her, or, at the best, remember her at times with a vague, affectionate regret. No man could spend his days in mourning continually over a passionate and inconvenient woman, who had brought him much sorrow and anxiety, even though in the end she chanced to have given him the best proof possible of her affection, by laying down her life for his. Well, so let it be. Afraid or not afraid, she would offer what she had, and the gift must be valued according to its worth in the eyes of him to whom it was given. Existence was a tangle which she had been quite unable to loose, and now, although her dread was deep, she was willing that Death should cut its knot; for here she had no hope, and, unless it pleased fate that it should be otherwise, to Death she would consign herself. All these thoughts, and many others, passed through her mind in that brief minute, while, tossed between love and terror, Joan stood to search the landscape and recover her breath. Then, with one last glance over the moorland, she stepped on to the road and began to walk slowly towards the Abbey. Fifty yards away the three paths met, but the ground lay so that to reach the Cross-Roads, their junction, and to see even a little distance along the other two of them, she must pass the corner of the broken churchyard wall. Dared she do it, knowing that perchance there her death awaited her? Coward that she was, while she lingered Henry might be murdered! Even now, perhaps this very instant, he was passing to his doom by one of the routes which she could not see. She paused a moment, looking up the main road in the hope that she might catch sight of Henry advancing down it. But she could perceive no one; an utter loneliness brooded on the place. Moreover, the moon at this moment was obscured by a passing cloud. For aught she knew, the deed was already done only then she would have heard the shot or perhaps Henry had driven to Rosham, or had gone by the beach, or the fit of homicidal mania had passed from her husband’s mind. Should she go on, or wait there, or run away? No, she must reach the Cross-Roads: she would not run; she would play the hand out.