“There, that is the end,” Miss Barbara sighed. “How very, very pretty. But they have made me quite sleepy.” A few fumes still smoldered at the edge of the moor, and the night, like an obscure ocean, was engulfing the lights, the movements; after the radiance the darkness was thick, oppressive. Eppie knew, as Gavan released her hand, that his eyes again sought hers, but she would not look at him. What could they say, here and now? He went on into the house, and Grainger, lingering outside, detained her on the steps. “You forgive me?” he said. She had almost forgotten for what, but fixing her eyes and thoughts upon him, she said, “Yes, Jim, of course.” “I couldn’t stand it,--you were so lovely,” said Grainger; “I didn’t know that I was such a sentimental brute. But I had no business not to stand it. It’s my business in life to stand it.” “I am so sorry, Jim,” Eppie murmured. “You know, I can do nothing--except forgive you.” “I am not ungrateful. I know how good it is of you to put up with me. Do I bother you too much, Eppie?” “No, Jim dear; you don’t.” He stood aside for her to enter the house. He saw that, with all her effort to be kind, her thought passed from him. Pausing to knock the ashes of his pipe against the wall, he softly murmured, “Damn,” before following her into the house. Eppie, in her own room, put out her candle and went to the window. Leaning out, she could see the soft maze of tree-tops emerge from the dim abyss beneath. The boughs of the pine-tree made the starlit sky pale with their blackness. This was the window where she and Gavan had stood on the morning of Robbie’s death. Here Gavan had shuddered, sobbing, in her arms. He had suffered, he had been able to love and suffer then. The long past went before her, this purpose in it all, her purpose; in all the young, unconscious beginnings, in the reunion, in her growing consciousness of something to oppose, to conquer, to save. And to-night had consecrated her to that sacred trust. What lived in him was hers. But could she keep him in life? The memory, a dark shadow, of the deep indifference that she had seen in his contemplative eyes went with a chill over her. Leaning out, she conquered her own deep fear, looking up at the stars and still praying, “O God, God.” IV She could not read his face next day. It showed a change, but the significance of the change was hidden from her. He knew that she knew; was that it? or did he think that they could still pretend at the unchanged fairy-tale where one clasped hands simply, like children? Or did he trust her to spare them both, now that she knew? When they were alone, this, more than all, the pale, jaded face seemed to tell her, it would be able to hide nothing; but its strength was in evasion; he would not be alone with her. All the morning he spent with the general and in the afternoon he went away, a book under his arm, down to the burn.