She had come to the end of her adventure. It was as if she had been brought there blindfold, carried past the border into the terrible, alien, unpenetrated lands. Her genius for exploration had never taken her within reasonable distance of them. She had turned back when the frontier was in sight, refusing all knowledge of the things that lay beyond. And here she was, in the very thick of it, at the heart of the unexplored, with her poor terrified eyes uncovered, her face held close to the thing she feared. And yet she had passed through the initiation without terror; she had held her hand in the strange fire and it had not hurt her. She felt only a great penetrating, comprehending, incorruptible pity for her sister who writhed there, consumed and tortured in the flame. She knelt by the bedside and stretched out her arm and covered her, and Kitty lay still. "You haven't gone?" she said. "No, Kitty." Kitty moved; she sat up and put her hands to her loosened hair. "I'll see him now," she said. Kitty slid her feet to the floor. She stood up, steadying herself by the bedside. Jane looked at her, and her heart was wrung with compassion. "No," she said, "wait till you're better. I'll tell him." But Kitty was before her at the door, leaning against it. "I shall never be better," she said. Her smile was ghastly. She turned to Jane on the open threshold. "He hasn't got the children with him, has he? I don't want to see them." "You won't see them." "Can't he come to me?" She peered down the passage and drew back, and Jane knew that she was afraid of being seen. "There's nobody about," she said, "they're all in the dining-room." Still Kitty hesitated. "Will you come with me?" she said. Then Jane took her hand and led her to the room where Robert was, and left her with him. He stood by the hearth, waiting for her. His head was bowed, but his eyes, as she entered, lifted and fixed themselves on her. There had gone from him that air of radiant and unconquerable youth, of innocence, expectant and alert. Instead of it he too wore the mark of experience, of initiation that had meant torture. "I hope," he said, "you are rested." "Oh yes." She stood there, weak and drooping, leaning her weight on one slender hand, spread palm downward on the table. He drew out a chair for her, and removed his own to the other side of the table, keeping that barrier between them. In his whole manner there was a terrible constraint. "You've eaten nothing," he said. Neither had he, she gathered, nor Jane. The trouble she had brought on them was jarring, dislocating, like the shock of bereavement. They had behaved as if in the presence of the beloved dead. And yet, though he held himself apart, she knew that he had not sent for her to cast her off; that he was yet bound to her by the mysterious, infrangible tie; that he seemed to himself, in some way, her partner and accomplice. Their silence was a link that bound them, and she broke it.