"I've got most of it, but not all--yet." His tone might or might not imply that getting it was only a question of time. "I say, where are you going?" She was heading rapidly for Augustus Road. She wanted to get away from George. "Not there," he protested, perceiving her intention. "I must." He followed her down the long road where the trees drooped darkly, and he stood with her by the gate. "How long will you be?" he said. "I can't say. Half-an-hour--three-quarters--ever so long." He waited for an hour, walking up and down, up and down the long road under the trees. She reappeared as he was turning at the far end of it. He had to run to overtake her. Her face had on it the agony of unborn tears. "What is it, Jinny?" he said. "Mabel Brodrick." She hardly saw his gesture of exasperation. "Oh, George, she suffers. It's terrible. There's to be an operation--to-morrow. I can think of nothing else." "Oh, Jinny, is there no one to take care of you? Is there no one to keep you from that woman?" "Oh don't--if you had seen her----" "I don't want to see her. I don't want _you_ to see her. You should never have anything to do with suffering. It hurts you. It kills you. You ought to be taken care of. You ought to be kept from the sight and sound of it." He gazed wildly round the Heath. "If Brodrick was any good he'd take you out of this damned place." "I wouldn't go. Poor darling, she can't bear me out of her sight. I believe I've worn a path going and coming." They had left the beaten path. Their way lay in a line drawn straight across the Heath from Brodrick's house. It was almost as if her feet had made it. "Jinny's path," he said. They were silent, and he gathered up, as it were, the burden of their silence when he stopped and faced her with his question-- "How are you going on?" LIX A YEAR passed and half a year, and she had not found an answer to Tanqueray's question. She had gone on somehow. He himself had made it easier for her by his frequent disappearances. He had found a place somewhere on Dartmoor where he hid himself from the destroyers, from the dreadful little people, where he hid himself from Rose. It helped her--not to have the question raised. Now (they were in August of nineteen-ten) Tanqueray was back again with his question. He had left her, about eleven o'clock in the evening, in her study, facing it. Not but that he had provided her with a solution, a positive solution. "Jinny," he had said, "why don't you do as I do? Why don't you go away, if it was only for a few months every year?"