Cecily did not speak. She and Robert had loved the yew enclosure better than any other part of the garden. All the times they had sat there together came before her now. She saw them as a drowning person is said to review the scenes in his past life. She saw the sunshine on the grass on hot summer afternoons. She smelled the roses. She thought of moonlit nights. She remembered one night,--soon after their marriage,--moonless, but full of stars, when she had sat with Robert on the bench under the hazels.... All at once she turned to Mayne. “I shall find my armor useful,” she said, in a clear, steady voice. “Thank you so much for recommending it. We can get into the house at the other door.” CHAPTER XI The Kingslakes had been in town nearly eight months. They had taken a flat in Westminster, and Cecily had been thankful for the work entailed by the move. She was thankful to leave the Priory; thankful even to part from her beloved garden. The whole place seemed to her desecrated, besmirched. That for the heights, as for the depths, of human happiness and human woe the same scene should be set, may be sport for the gods. For the actors in the drama it is agony, and it was with relief unspeakable that Cecily set her face towards London and a different existence. It was only when the flat was in order, and life began to run smoothly, that she realized how much easier, as far as outward circumstances were concerned, existence had become. It was, as she had suggested to Robert, very simple to see little of one another. When her husband was indoors he was always in his study. But Robert was very little at home in those days. Cecily asked no questions. He went his way; she hers. London seized them both, and whirled them, for the most part, in opposite directions. When they met, it was with friendliness, tempered on Robert’s side with an implied, perfunctory reproach. “Remember this is your doing. This state of things is the outcome of your wish,” was what his manner expressed, while with visible relief he accepted his freedom. Cecily sometimes smiled when, directly after one of their infrequent lunches together, she heard the front door bang, and listened to her husband’s impatient summons for the lift. The smile was still bitter, but, as time went on, it hurt less.