Gavan had now a vague, chill smile for the pertinacity of her faith. Something had broken in him, as if, with Robbie’s passing, a veil had been drawn from reality, an illusion of confidence dispelled forever. He leaned out of the window and breathed in the scent of the wet pine-tree, looking, with an odd detachment and clearness of observation,--as if through that acceptation of tragedy all his senses had grown keener,--at the bluish bloom the dew made upon the pine-needles; at the flowers and fruit in the garden below, the thatched roof of the summer-house, the fragile whiteness of the roses growing near it, like a bridal veil blown against the ancient wall. It was, in a moment of strange, suspended vision, as if he had often and often seen tragic dawn in the garden before and was often to see it again. What was he? Where was he? All the world was like a dream and he seemed to see to its farthest ends and back to its beginnings. Eppie stood silent beside him. He was presently conscious of her silence, and then, the uncanny crystal, gazing sense slipping from him, of a possible unkindness in his repudiating grief. He looked round at her. The poor child’s eyes, heavy with weeping and all the weight of the dark, encompassing woe he had shown her, dwelt on him with a somber compassionateness. “Poor, darling little Eppie,” he said, putting an arm about her, “what a brute, a selfish brute, I am.” “Why a brute, Gavan?” “Making you suffer--more. I’m always making you suffer, Eppie, always; and you are really such a happy person. Come, let us go out for a walk. Let us go out on the moor. It will be delicious in the heather now. I want to see it and smell it. It will do us good.” She resented his wisdom. “But you won’t forget Robbie, while we walk.” For a moment, as if in great weariness, Gavan leaned his head against her shoulder. “Don’t talk of Robbie, please. We must forget him--just now, or try to, or else we can’t go on at all.” Still she persisted, for she could not let it go like that: “I can think of him and go on too. I don’t want to run away from Robbie because he makes me unhappy.” Gavan sighed, raising his head. “You are stronger than I am, Eppie. I must--I must run away.” He took her hand and drew her to the door, and she followed him, though glancing back, as she went, at the little form under the shroud. VI