But the indifference persisted. Her feelings for Roddy were an odd confusion; there were times, when she was away from him, and the thought of him made her heart beat--"This is love--at last." There were times again when, as she sat beside him, she could have beaten her hands against the walls for very boredom and for his impenetrable taciturnity as he read _The Times_ from the Births and Marriages on the front page to the advertisements on the last and flung her details--"London Scottish won their game at Richmond--That Fettes man got over three times," or "I wouldn't give a button for that horse of old Tranty Stummits they're all so gone on. You mark my words...." "I'd like to see that new piece of Edwardes'"--"They've got a girl in it who dances on her nose--jolly pretty she is, too, so Massiter says. He's been five times and there's a song about moonlight or some old rot that they say is spiffin'----" How to adjust this horrible stupidity with the courage, the humour, the affection, even the poetry that she found in him at other times? There were days when she cared for him with a new thrilling emotion, something that had in it a quality of curiosity as though he were coming before her as someone unknown and unexpected. There were other days when she wondered how he could have remained, through all the crisis, so precisely the same Roddy. Meanwhile between all these uncertainties she lost touch with herself. It was as though her soul flew, like some bird in a strange country, from point to point, restless, unsatisfied.... II Then those few hurried words with Christopher on the afternoon of the Duchess's visit flung, at an instant, her whole life into crisis. Even as the words left him she knew that it was up to this that all her days had been leading, that at last she was, in very truth, face to face with her grandmother, that the battle between the two of them had commenced. She knew, in those few minutes whilst she stood there, motionless, in that room, other things. She knew--and this was the first sharp conviction that struck her heart--that, at all costs, whatever else might come to her, she must not now lose Roddy's love. Strangely, as she stood there facing her danger, some warm glow heightened her colour as she felt from this what Roddy really meant to her. She thought then of Francis Breton, of his danger if her family understood how implicated he was with her. It was true that she had, not very long ago, contemplated running away with him, and surely nothing could have implicated him more than that, but now that he should suffer and yet not have her, secured, as his reward for his suffering--that, at all pain to herself, she must prevent. Her first impulse after Christopher had left her was to go down instantly to Roddy and confess everything. Then she paused.