It came at last, a broken story, through many gusts of breath, all pretences down between them now and their hearts naked before each other. Fenella Stanley, who, since she left Newnham, had been working (as he knew) as a voluntary assistant at some Women's Settlement in London, had just been offered and had accepted the position of its resident Lady Warden, and signed on for seven years. "Seven years, you say?" "Seven years, dear." The Governor had prayed and protested, saying he had only one daughter, and asking if she meant that he was to live the rest of his life alone, but Fenella, who had written heart-breaking letters, had held to her purpose. It was like taking the veil, like going into a nunnery; the girl was lost to them, they had seen the last of her. "I had it all from Catherine Green," said Janet. Willie Killip, the postman, had given her the letter just when she was standing at the porch, looking down the Curragh lane for Victor, and seeing him coming along with his high step and the sunset behind him, swishing the heads off the cushags with his cane. "I couldn't find it in my heart to tell you last night, and you looking so happy, so I ran away to my room, and it's a sorrowful woman I am to tell you this morning." She knew it would be bitter hard to him--as hard as it must have been to Jacob to serve seven years for Rachel and then lose her, and that was the saddest story in the old Book, she thought. "But we must bear it as well as we can, dear, and--who knows?--it may all be for the best some day." Victor, resting on his elbow, had listened with mouth agape. The flaming light which had crimsoned his sky for five long years, sustaining him, inspiring him, had died out in an instant. For some moments he did not speak, and in the intervals of Janet's lamentations nothing was audible but the cry of some sea-gulls who had come up from the sea, where a storm was rising. Then he began to laugh. It was wild, unnatural laughter, beginning thick in his throat and ending with a scream. "Lord, what a joke!" he cried. "What a damned funny joke!" But at the next moment he broke into a stifling sob, and fell face down on to the pillow and soaked it with his tears. Janet hung over him like a mother-bird over a broken nest, her wrinkled face working hard with many emotions--sorrow for her boy and even anger with Fenella. "Aw, dear! aw, dear!" she moaned, "many a time I've wished I had been your real mother, dear; but never so much as now that I might have a right to comfort you." At that word, though sadly spoken, Victor raised himself from his pillow, brushed his eyes fiercely and said, in a firm, decided voice, "That's all right, mother. I've been a fool. But it shall never happen again--never!" CHAPTER SIX THE WORLD OF WOMAN