'You called at Old Lafer that very day, just after Dad had gone to see if she would be persuaded to come back at once.' 'Yes, I did.' Would he ever forget that call? It was on a bleak day in early spring. No gleam of sunshine lit up the old house as he rode up the hill. A north-east wind blew off the moors, whose hollows were still snow-drifted. The roar of the swollen stream thundering down the gill filled the air; the larches strained away from the buildings they sheltered, creaking with every fresh blast. He had knocked at the front door without answer, then gone round to the back with the same result. Not even the bark of a dog disturbed the death-like silence. Returning to the flags he scanned the fields. In the corner of the first pasture was a temporary shed for the ewes. As he looked, Dinah Constantine emerged from it carrying two lambs. Her keen eyes noted him instantly. She ran back, put down the lambs, and came up the field at the top of her speed. On reaching him she grasped his arm with the grip of a vice, poured into his amazed ears her dreary story, and finally opened the parlour door and showed him Anna. She was sitting at the table with outflung arms, in which her face was buried. It was her first sorrow. She was exhausted by a grief that had been passionate and now was sickening. It seemed to her earnest and matter-of-fact nature that happiness had flown for ever from Old Lafer. He sat down and reasoned with her after closing the door against Dinah. He did not go near her, knowing instinctively that to feel any one near her would be intolerable, circumscribing, as it would seem to do, both grief and sympathy. Standing near the window in silence for a while, then sitting down apart, but where she could see him when she looked up, as he hoped she would do soon, he set himself to win her through the struggle and show her the light again.