She looked about the empty drawing-room, then hurried away through the little wood. How unlike her to be late! She was always the first of the party. But to-day she had been dreaming in her bedroom, sitting, with her hands in her lap, looking out of the window, wondering, longing to know ... No, she was not jealous. Her curiosity had no tinge of jealousy in it. Why should she be jealous? Was not the thing over, closed? Had not the woman herself dismissed him? That strange figure in that strange country! The wild town, as he had described it, like a village with towers and towers, gold and green and blue, and the carts with painted roofs and the strange writing on the shop-walls ... and the woman standing there, in the middle of it. This woman, who had known Philip better than Katherine knew him, whom Philip had madly loved, who had borne Philip a son. She was still living there, loving, now, perhaps someone else, looking back perhaps with some scorn and some pity and some affection to the days when Philip had kissed her, to the hour when their son had died, to that first meeting in the strange country house, where everyone might come and go as they pleased. No, there was no jealousy; but Katherine wanted to have her there, standing in front of her, so that she might study her clothes, her hair, her eyes. Here was a woman whom Philip had madly loved—and he had ceased to love her. Well, he might also cease to love Katherine. But that other woman had dismissed him. Fancy dismissing him! When one had shared with him such experiences how could one ever let him go?... Ah, what, _what_ was she like? Was her voice soft or harsh? How did she look when Philip made love to her? When Philip made love to her.... Yes, there was pain in that. Katherine hurried under the low porch of the church. She could hear the voice: ‘Wherefore I pray and beseech you, as many as are here present, to accompany me with a pure heart....’ As the congregation knelt she slipped into a seat at the back of the church. She had always loved the shabby, ugly little place. It had, for one thing, nothing to boast about—had no fine carvings like the Rafiel Church, no splendid tombs like the two Dunstan St. Firths at Poloynt, no wonderful glass like the Porthcullin memorial window at Borhaze; frankly ugly, white-washed, with thin narrow grey glass in the side-walls and a hideous purple Transfiguration above the altar, with plain, ugly seats, a terrible modern lectern, a shabby nondescript pulpit, a font like an expensive white sweet, and the most shining and vulgar brass tablet commemorating the Garth heroes of the Boer War.