The front door stood open, and she passed through it, but she did not go beyond the gate. The moor was changelessly her friend, yet George was on it, and perhaps he, too, called it by that name. She was jealous that he should, and she did not like to think that the earth under her feet stretched to the earth under his, that the same sky covered them, that they were fed by the same air; yet this was not on account of any enmity, but because the immaterial distance between them was so great that a material union mocked it. Evening was slipping into night: there was no more rain, but the ground smelt richly damp, and seemed to heave a little with life eager to be free; a cloud, paler than the night, dipped upon the moor above Brent Farm and rose again, like the sail of a ship seen on a dark sea. Then a light moving on the road caught back Helen's thoughts and she went into the house. "He's coming," she said listlessly, careless of the use of pronouns. There was a pronoun on a ship, one on the moor, another driving up the road, and each had an importance and a supremacy that derided a mere name. She shut the schoolroom door and waited in the hall, but half an hour later, she opened the door again. "It's good news," she said breathlessly. "Do you want to speak to him, Rupert? She's going to live!" She could not see her own happiness reflected. "Like that?" John asked roughly. "No, better, better. Always in bed, perhaps, but able to speak and understand." He lifted his big shoulders; Uncle Alfred flicked something from his knee and, in the silence, Helen felt forlorn; her brightness faded. "And you'll be left here with her, alone!" Miriam wailed, at last. "Alone?" asked John. "Uncle Alfred's going to take me away," Miriam said, yet she was not sure of that, and she looked curiously at him. "I want her to go," Helen said quickly. John was still glowering at Miriam. "Take you away! You talk as if you were a parcel!" "I knew you would be angry," she said. "You've always been hard on me, and you don't understand." "Well, it's Helen's affair." "You don't understand," Miriam said again. She sat close to Uncle Alfred, and he patted her. "Helen knows best," Lily said cheerfully, for she suspected what she did not know. "And we'll look after her. Come along, John. It's time we all went to bed." "He'll grumble all the way home," Miriam said with a pout. Rupert was still talking to the doctor: they had found some subject to their taste, and their voices sounded loudly in the quiet house. Helen had gone out to speak to Zebedee's old horse. "Now, tell me what's the matter," Uncle Alfred said. "Didn't Helen tell you?" "No." "Well," she swayed towards him, "the fact is, I'm too fascinating, Uncle Alfred. It's only fair to warn you."