The time crawled by; the hours were long and the days interminable. Even buying things--a luxury in which he allowed himself considerable latitude--could not possess the empty spaces in a life that had been filled with her presence. And to her, moving gently in the curtained stillness of the sick-room, among the medicine-bottles and the apparatus of sickness as the rich know it, holding the thin hand that came out of a scented, soft bed to cling to hers, it seemed that either this ordered quietude was a dream, or else that nothing in the last few weeks was true, had been true, could ever be true again. The escape, the flight, the Medway days, the reckless mock marriage, the life of fine and delicate adventure, the blue sky, the green leaves, the mystery of mountains, the sparkle of water, and the velvet of old lawns, the constant and deepening comradeship of a man of whose existence a month ago she had not so much as dreamed--could these be real--all these which she had renounced to come to the sick woman who longed for her--had these really been hers--could they ever be hers again? Suffering had broken down the consistent unselfishness of a lifetime, and the aunt clung to her as children cling, frightened in the dark. "You won't leave me," she said, over and over again. "Your husband won't mind. It won't be for long." "Of course I'll not leave you," she said, and wondered at the thrill her aunt's words gave her and the pang she felt as she uttered her own. Every day while the aunt slept she crept away and went out into the air--the first day into bright sunshine which was unbearable; after that into the quiet, lamp-lit dusk of the square at night. The London night was so unlike night on the Welsh Hills that it seemed a medium that could not torment her with memories. Whereas the sunshine was the same sunshine which had lain like a benediction in that far country of delight. The lilacs and snowberries in the square inclosure, which were dried and dusty by day, borrowed from the kindly twilight the air of fresh groves, and among their somber shadows she walked as in some garden of dusky enchantments, where, alone with her dreams and her memories, she could weave, out of the past and the future, a web of glory to clothe the cold walls of the empty room which, she began to perceive, life without Edward was, and must be. It was on the third evening, as she stood, fumbling with the key of the garden, she knew that some one stood on the pavement just behind her, and, turning sharply, was face to face with Mr. Schultz.