Young Kadwell often called to enquire, and made himself useful in various ways. He was on a fortnight’s sick-leave, after an outbreak of his old wound. He had been sniped during some patrol work at Loos in 1915, and though once more fit for service had been kept in England ever since. At present he was quartered at Eastbourne, but expected soon to be sent back to France. At first Nell was too harassed and miserable to realise that his visits were largely on her account. Moreover, she was sexually very humble—she had loved so long without return that she had never learned to look for advances. But Kadwell had no reason to hide his feelings, nor any skill if he had had reason, so in time Nell was bound to become aware of them. The discovery did not give her any great pleasure—the faint pride she occasionally felt at his notice was always dangerously on the edge of disgust. She was sensitive throughout her being to his coarseness—which at the same time had curious, intermittent powers of attraction—and there was something in his bold, appraising look which struck her with shame; with his tastes, thoughts and appetites she had nothing in common. She avoided him as much as she could, feeling guilty because of the faint thrills which occasionally mixed with her dislike. It was a sad year’s ending. Her confinement in the house dragged down even further her health and spirits, her father’s sick-bed filled her with wretchedness and shame. It seemed to preach to her the lesson of what she really was, in spite of all her dreams. How had she ever dared to plot for the greatness of the curate’s love? Who was she to mate with a priest, a scholar, a gentleman? The sordid grind of her day, shut up in the muddle of Worge, her hours in that sag-roofed, stuffy bedroom, nursing her father through the trivialities and degradations of an illness brought on and intensified by drink—and then the crowning irony of an occasional “parish visit” from her loved one, his polite enquiries, his parsonic sympathy—all seemed to shout at her that she was nothing but a common girl, not only of humble but of shameful heritage, an obscure, half-educated nobody, who was now bearing the punishment of her presumptuous hopes. She gave up her Sunday-school class, making her father’s illness an excuse; she also gave up going to church. This was partly due to lack of time, partly to a dread of the empty shell. She told herself bitterly that her religion had never been real—it had only been part of the mirage—she might as well give up the pretence of it. Besides, she could not bear to look any more on the background of her vanished dreams, the soft colours and lights against which they had glowed, to hear the sighing tones which had set them to music in her heart.