They arranged to go out shopping, and John bought Amaryllis a new emerald ring. "Green is the colour of hope," she said. "I want green, John, because it will make me think of the springtime and nature, and all beautiful things." They lunched at a restaurant and in the afternoon went down to Ardayre. John had many things to attend to and would be occupied all the following day. There had been no Christmas feasting, but there were gifts to be distributed and various other duties and ceremonies to be gone through, although they had missed the Christmas day. Amaryllis tried in every way to be helpful to her husband, and he appreciated her stateliness and sweet manners with all the tenants and people on the estate. So the four days passed quite smoothly, and the last night of the old year came. "I don't think that you must sit up for it, dear," John said after dinner. "It will only tire you, and it is always a rather sad moment unless one has a party as we always had in old days." Amaryllis went obediently to her room and stayed there; sleep was far from her eyes. What was the rest of her life going to be without Denzil? And what of John? Would they settle down into a real quiet friendship when he came back, and the child was born? Or would she have always to feel that he loved her and was for ever suffering pain? The more she thought the less clear the issue became, and the deeper the sadness in the atmosphere. At last she slipped down onto the big white bear-skin rug and began to pray. But when the clock struck midnight, and the New Year bells rang out, a dreadful depression fell upon her, a sense of foreboding and fear. She tried to tell herself that she was foolish, and it was all caused only because she was so highly strung and sensitive now, on account of her state. But the thought would persist that danger threatened some one she loved. Was it Denzil, or John? Amaryllis tried to force herself from her unhappy impressions by thinking of what she could do presently in the summer, when she would be quite well again, though her greatest work must always be to try to make John happy, if by then he had come home. She heard him go into his room at about one o'clock, and then she crept noiselessly to her great gilt bed. John had waited for the New Year by the cedar parlour fire. The room was so filled with the radiance of Amaryllis that he liked being there. And he, too, was thinking of what their new life would be should he chance to come through. The ache in his heart would gradually subside, he supposed, but how would he bear the long years, knowing that Amaryllis was thinking of Denzil--and longing for him--and if fate made them meet--what then? How could he endure to know that these two beings were suffering?