An indescribable loneliness seized her as she walked over the gravelled court to the gates. The afternoon sunshine was less friendly than rain and bitter wind. She took the road to the parks, meeting the signs of the war that had obliterated the old Sunday afternoons of Oxford in the days of peace. Here was suffering, a deliberate preparation for more suffering. Did all this world-suffering make her small personal grief any less? Yes, it did; it would help her to get over the dreary space of time, the days, months, years till she was a grey-haired woman and was resigned, having learned patience and even become thankful! Once she thought she saw the figure of the Warden in the distance, and then her heart beat suffocatingly, but it was not he. Once she thought she saw Bingham walking with some other man. He rounded the walk by the river and--no, it was not Mr. Bingham--the face was different. She began asking herself questions that had begun to disturb her. Was the real tragedy of the Warden's engagement to him not the discovery that Gwendolen was silly and weak, but that she was not honourable? Had he suspected something of the kind before he received that letter? Wasn't it a suspicion of the kind that had made him speak as he did in the drawing-room after they had returned from Christ Church? Might he not have been contented with Gwendolen if she had been straight and true, however weak and foolish? Was he the sort of man who demands sympathy and understanding from friends, men and women, but something very different from a wife? Was the Warden one of those men who prefer a wife to be shallow because they shrink from any permanent demand being made upon their moral nature or their intellect? Perhaps the Warden craved a wife who was thoughtless, and, choosing Gwendolen, was disappointed in her, solely because he found she was not trustworthy. That suspicion was a bitter one. Was it an unjust suspicion? As May walked, the river beside her slipped along slowly under the melancholy willows. The surface of the water was laden with fallen leaves and the wreckage of an almost forgotten summer. It was strangely sad, this river! May turned away and began walking back to the Lodgings. There was a deepening sunshine in the west, a glow was coming into the sky. Oh, the sadness of that glorious sunset! May was glad to hide away from it in the narrow streets. She was glad to get back to the court and to enter the darkened house, and yet there was no rest for her there. Soon, very soon, she would say good-bye to this calm secluded home and go out alone into the wilderness! She walked straight to her room and took off her things, and then went into Lady Dashwood's room. Louise was arranging a little table for tea between the bed and the windows. "Well!" cried Lady Dashwood. "So you have had a good walk!" "It was a lovely afternoon," said May. She looked out of the window and could see the colour of the sunset reflected on the roof opposite.