On the second day of her sojourn at Fordestown she wrote to Dolly at Tetherstones. She found it impossible to give any adequate reason for her abrupt departure, so she barely touched upon it beyond begging her to believe that in spite of everything she was and would ever be deeply grateful for all the kindness that they had shown her. She ended the letter with a request that the next time Oliver had to come to Fordestown he might bring her sketching materials to her. She posted her letter and went out on to the moor for the rest of the day. The solitude of the great heather-clad space that she loved brought soothing to her tired spirit. She was at last able to review the situation deliberately and dispassionately; but the more she meditated upon it, the more did she feel that the disposition of the future was no longer in her own control. Very curiously, and now it seemed inextricably, had her life been bound up with Montague Rotherby’s. Neither attraction nor repulsion were factors that counted any more. He had laid claim to her so persistently that she had almost begun to feel at last that he had a claim. In any case she was too tired, too dazed by the blows of Fate, to battle any further. She who had fought so hard for her freedom was compelled to own herself vanquished at last. Like a stormy dawn romance had come to her, and by its light she had seen the golden vision of love. But the light had swiftly faded and the vision fled. And she was left—a slave. “I will never have any more dreams,” she said to herself, as she gazed through tears at the dim blue tors. “None but a fool could ever imagine that the stones could be made bread.” And then she sought to brace herself with the thought that she had not greatly suffered. “It can’t have gone very deep,” she told herself very resolutely, “in so short a time.” But yet she knew—as we all know—that it is not by time or any other circumstance that Love the Immeasurable can be measured, and that no power on earth can ever obliterate the memory of Love.