For an instant the grey eyes faltered. ‘But that, surely,’ she began in a low voice, still steadily sewing, ‘that was our compact last night—that you should let me help, that you should trust me just as you trusted the mother years ago who came in the little cart with the shaggy dusty pony to the homesick boy watching at the window. Perhaps,’ she added, her fingers trembling, ‘in this odd shuffle of souls and faces, I _am_ that mother, and most frightfully anxious you should not give in. Why, even because of the tiredness, even because the cause seems vain, you must still fight on—wouldn’t she have said it? Surely there are prizes, a daughter, a career, no end! And even they gone—still the self undimmed, undaunted, that took its drubbing like a man.’ ‘I know you know I’m all but crazed; you see this wretched mind all littered and broken down; look at me like that, then. Forget even you have befriended me and pretended—Why must I blunder on and on like this? Oh, Grisel, my friend, my friend, if only you loved me!’ Tears clouded her eyes. She turned vaguely as if for a hiding-place. ‘We can’t talk here. How mad the day is. Listen, listen! I do—I do love you—mother and woman and friend—from the very moment you came. It’s all so clear, so clear: _that_, and your miserable “must,” my friend. Come, we will go away by ourselves a little, and talk. That way. I’ll meet you by the gate.’ CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past a little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its low flint wall. Skirting a field of stubble, she struck into a wood by a path that ran steeply up the hillside. And by and by they came to a glen where the woodmen of a score of years ago had felled the trees, leaving a green hollow of saplings in the midst of their towering neighbours. ‘There,’ she said, holding out her hand to him, ‘now we are alone. Just six hours or so—and then the sun will be there,’ she pointed to the tree-tops to the west, ‘and then you will have to go; for good, for good—you your way, and I mine. What a tangle—a tangle is this life of ours. Could I have dreamt we should ever be talking like this, you and I? Friends of an hour. What will you think of me? Does it matter? Don’t speak. Say nothing—poor face, poor hands. If only there were something to look to—to pray to!’ She bent over his hand and pressed it to her breast. ‘What worlds we’ve seen together, you and I. And then—another parting.’ They wandered on a little way, and came back and listened to the first few birds that flew up into the higher branches, noonday being past, to sing.