Sandholes was in sight now, and the horse quickened its pace, triumphing over the last few wearisome yards. As they approached the house, with its white face set on a body of looming buildings behind, they had as always a mingled sensation of sadness and relief. Not that the place was sad to them because of its dreary emptiness set amongst formless fields. In the course of years it had become for them merely an atmosphere, not a thing of sight. They were only depressed by it because for them it was the heart of failure and loss. And in the same way they were relieved by it, dignified, sanctuaried and consoled, because this was their hiding-place against the world, and here the heart of their few memories of joy. The house was dark, but they were accustomed to that, used to the door that would not open, however they knocked, and the windows that for ever would never frame a face, however they hailed. They were used to that stumbling into the place in the folding dark, to the striking of a match that brought them nothing but the dreary waiting rigidity of the things they had left behind. They were used, too, to an uprising fear on the struck light that some terrible change might have taken place in the empty house; that even the waiting things might have played them false while they were gone.... So lonely looked the place, that it seemed as if it might even revenge itself upon those who had the temerity to awaken it during that sinking hour, but, as they reached the gate, the old dog asleep in a loose box aroused himself to a hoarse, recognising bark. The few cows, also, waiting to be fed, sent out deep complaints at the sound of the coming wheels. And as they finally rattled into the uneven yard, a woman’s figure stood up and waved to them from the sea-wall. PART III MAY I The afternoon which had seen Sarah’s short-lived splendour had been sweet also for May. Sweeter, indeed, since for her there was no clashing of fierce passions to jar the tender witchery of her mood. And though the glamour was of the past,--a sheet of gold as of sunlight far at the back of her mind; a sea of gold from which she moved ever inward towards the darkness of the hills,--a tongue of light had suddenly darted from it to stream like a golden wind-blown ribbon over her path. That light was the knowledge that in her own hands lay the possibility of Geordie’s return.