He looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I must be going." She glanced at the hands of the watch over his shoulder. "You needn't," she said. "It isn't really time." "Well--five minutes." The five minutes went. "Time's up," he said. "Oh, no, Robert--not yet." "Kitty--don't you want to see them?" "I don't want you to go." "I'm coming back." "Yes, but it won't be the same thing. It never will be the same thing as now." "Poor Kitty--I say, I _must_ go and meet them." "Very well." She stood up. "Kiss me," she said. She took his kiss as if it were the last that would be given her. They went together to the hotel. Jane had started five minutes ago for the station. "It's all right," he said. "I'll catch her up." She followed to the gates and looked down the white road where Jane had gone. "Let me come with you--just a little way--to the first lamp-post on the station road." "Well, to the first lamp-post." At the lamp-post she let him go. She stood looking after him till he swung round the turn of the road, out of her sight. Then she went back, slowly, sad-eyed, and with a great terror in her heart. CHAPTER XVII It was not the thing she had confessed to him, fear of his little unseen children, it was terror, unconfessed, uncomprehended, as it were foreknowledge of the very soul of destiny clothed for her in their tender flesh and blood. Up till now she had been careless of her destiny. She had been so joyous, so defiant in her sinning. By that charm of hers, younger than youth, indestructibly childlike, she had carried it through with the audacity of chartered innocence. She had propitiated, ignored, eluded the more feminine amenities of fate. Of course, she had had her bad moments. She had been sorry, sometimes, and she had been sick; but on the whole her powers had been splendidly recuperative. She had shown none of those naked tender spots that provoke destiny to strike. And with it all she had preserved, perhaps too scrupulously, the rules laid down for such as she. She had kept her own place. She had never attempted to invade the sanctuaries set apart for other women. It was Robert who had tempted her to that transgression. He had opened the door of the sanctuary for her and shut it behind her and put his back against it. He had made her believe that if she stayed in there, with him, it would be all right. She might have known what would happen. It was for such a moment, of infatuation made perfect, that destiny was waiting. Kitty had no very luminous idea of its intentions. But she bore in her blood forebodings, older and obscurer than the flashes of the brain; and her heart had swift immortal instincts, forerunners of the mortal hours. The powers of pain, infallibly wise, implacably just, would choose their moment well, striking at her through the hands of the children she had never borne.