He turned, strode a few steps away from her, and stood looking down into the grass. She could hear him muttering. For a little time she waited, head bent, expectant of the sudden bursting of his revolt against the truth. But it never came. His silence was more pregnant with rebuke than speech could ever have been. She bore with it until she thought she had given him full opportunity to rail against her had he wished, then she walked slowly away, the unconquerable sickness in her heart. She walked slowly; but she did not look back. Would he follow her? Would he? Would he? She reached the gap in the hedge. Then she turned her head. He was still standing where she had left him, gazing down into the forest of grass stems. CHAPTER III This ended her life at Cailsham. How could she remain, how face the reproach, no matter what effort she knew he would make to conceal it, which at any moment she might find herself compelled to meet in the eyes of Wilfrid Grierson? Cailsham was too small a place, the little set in which her mother moved too narrow and confined to ever hope of avoiding it. This must end her life at Cailsham. With the readiness of this realization, then, why had she told? Cry the woman a fool! She was a fool. Most good women are. But just as the matter is vital in the mind of a man, so is it in the woman the crucial test of honour. A thousand reasons--her happiness--the happiness of content,--the sheltering of her name, the sheltering of her position, all the cared-for security of her life to follow--these can be placed in the scale, weighty arguments against that little drachm of abstract honour, to plead for her silence. A thousand times she could have been justified in saying nothing; but had she done so she would have been a different woman. Fine things must be done sometimes; mean things will be done always. There are men and women to do them both. That no passion was in the heart of her may have been an aid to her honesty. With passion to lift the scale on to the agate, there would have been a deed worthy of eulogy then! But even as it was, she sacrificed much; she sacrificed her all. For now she knew that she must go; and there could he no more joy in life for her in the love of little Maurice. To face that, she clutched her hands that afternoon as she walked back into Cailsham. How it was to be accomplished, how endured, was more than she could realize, more than the listless energy of her mind could grasp.