It was late before Ruth gathered her work up and said good-night. She was honestly tired in mind and body, but an unaccountable reluctance to leave Violet held her. And yet the girl was apparently less restless, more normal, than usual. Tired out, like herself, surely she would sleep. Her terror out in the storm seemed entirely to have gone. So Ruth reasoned to herself as she went downstairs. In the sitting-room the little dogs slept soundly in their baskets. The fire still burned, a handful of warm red ashes. The whole place seemed full of peace and comfort, in marked contrast to the rush and wail of the storm outside. Ruth crossed to the lamp to see that it was in order, and moved about putting little tidying touches to the room, as women do the last thing before they go upstairs to bed. She was fully alive to the fact that the three weeks of Violet’s visit had been a heavy strain on her, mentally and bodily. It would be quite easy to imagine things, to let this knowledge that she was fighting steadily, almost fiercely, against some awful unseen force overwhelm her, to drive her beyond the limits of what was sanely and reasonably possible. With her renewed sense of awareness of Dick Carey’s presence had come an indefinable yearning tenderness for Violet Riversley which had been lacking before in her kindly interest and friendship. To give way to fear or dread was the surest way to fail in both. She looked out at the night. By the light streaming from the window she could see a streak of rain-washed lawn, and, dimly, beyond, the tortured branches of trees bowed and strained under the whip of the wind. She drew all the forces of her mind to the centre of her being. “Lord of the heights and depths, Who dwellest in all the Forms that Thou hast made.” She let the blind fall into its place and moved back into the room. Larry had settled himself in the big armchair which had been Dick Carey’s. She stooped to stroke his head, and he looked at her with eyes that surely understood. “Lord of the heights and depths, Who dwellest in all the Forms that Thou hast made.” She kept the words and the thought in her mind quite steadily. Almost as soon as she lay down she passed into sleep, and dreamt—dreamt that she was walking in the buttercup field with Dick Carey and it was early morning in the heart of the springtime. And he told her many things, many and wonderful and beautiful things, which afterwards she tried to recall and could not. And then, suddenly, he was calling to her from a distance, and she was broad wide awake sitting up in bed, and Larry in the room below barked fiercely, then was silent.