And so through the afternoon, alone and driven to bay, Donelle suffered. The sun went down, leaving its benediction on the wonderful river which glistened and throbbed as it swelled with the high, full tide, but there was no peace for Donelle. A shame she could not understand overcame her. Her unawakened sex battled with the grim spectre. Then memory helped the girl and she became a woman as she sat alone in the still room; a woman so pure and simple that Jo was saved. How great poor Jo’s love must have been, always! How little she had asked, how bravely she had borne her punishment! The care and devotion of the long nights, when Donelle was so ill, returned like dreams and haunted the girl. That was the beginning of Jo, and this was the end? But was it? It was all in her, Donelle’s, hands, to decide. She could keep still! She could take her life, make it beautiful, and by and by she could come back to Mamsey. Then she would say, "This I have done for you! But I could not do it then! I could not give up then," Donelle murmured. Then the present held the girl, drove away the temptation. There was the little, lonely white house under the hill at Point of Pines and Mamsey who that morning had said: "Child, I’m gladder than you know to be able to give you your chance." Her chance! Just then a maid tapped at the door and gave her a message. Mrs. Lindsay would be detained for dinner and would not be home until late. "We are to start to-morrow," the girl said, "very early." And again Donelle was alone with her chance! Later she ate her dinner quietly in the dim oak dining room. Candles burned; there was an open fire on the hearth and pale yellow hothouse roses on the table. Never was the girl to forget that last meal in the Walled House. And then, she was once more alone upstairs with—her chance! She went to the window and looked out. A rising moon was lighting the road, The Road! Suddenly Tom Gavot seemed to stand in the emptiness and beckon her from that road with which he had played when he was a sad and neglected child. How clean and fine he had made it seem; he who had come from such a father! In that moment Pierre Gavot shrank from sight, he had polluted the road, but Tom had sanctified it. The road was open now for Donelle to choose. Should she go over the hill to life or—— And so she struggled. She heard Mrs. Lindsay return, but it did not occur to her to confide in any one. The shame was only bearable if she bore it in secret, but where should she bear it? Out, over the hill, where no one knew; where Mrs. Lindsay and Jo would keep people from knowing? Could she be happy and forget? Donelle took up her violin. She clutched it to her. It could make her forget, it _must_! Even if she wakened the household she felt she must play. But she could not play! Her hand was heavy, her brain dull. Then something Revelle had once said to her flashed into her mind.