Sarah Belworthy, for her part, experienced great turbulence of conflicting fears. Her mind was fixed, yet had something in it of absolute terror, as she reflected upon the recent interview. She had offered herself to him as a sudden inspiration; and now, retracing that fevered scene, John Aggett’s frenzy of demeanour alarmed her much, for it was a revelation of the man she had not encountered until then. Presently an answer came to her puzzled mind—a solution of a sort that made the blood surge hotly to Sarah’s face. Could it be that she had offered herself where she was wanted no more? Had John’s chivalry alone been responsible for his ready undertaking to receive her back? She nearly screamed in the silence of her little chamber at this thought; she desisted from her labour of preparation and flung herself upon her bed in secret shame. But reason quickly banished the fear. She remembered the man’s intoxication of joy, his delirious thanksgiving. She felt her bosom sore where he had hugged her to himself and praised the God of Justice. Next she retraced his subsequent display of passion, his extravagant utterances and threats. She realized very fully that he held the pending crisis as one of vital magnitude and knew that he was strung to a pitch far beyond any that previous experience of him had exhibited or revealed to her. She determined to give him no cause for further excitement and so returned to her work, wondering the while what this ingredient of fear might be that had entered into her emotions concerning him. Anon her thoughts passed to the other man, and the last struggle began. For his own salvation she was leaving him, but with natural human weakness she much desired that he should know of her great sacrifice in the time to come. That Timothy should pursue his life in ignorance of the truth after she had departed was a terrible thought to Sarah; but, since to see him again appeared out of the question, there remained a possibility that he would deem her faithless and worthless to the end. She knelt and prayed that the nature of the thing she had done might be revealed to him in fulness of time; and then her mind grew active in another direction and she marvelled why she had thrown herself back into her first lover’s arms and not taken his advice to remain free of both. Her feelings toward Aggett eluded all possibility of analysis or understanding. She fled from them to the task of setting her small possessions in order and packing her basket for the forthcoming departure. Sarah could not write, and she was unable therefore to leave any message for her parents. Their anxiety must endure for the space of a day and night, but might then be allayed. She pictured herself dictating a letter to the scrivener at Ashburton, and wondered what she should put in it.