THE THINGS WHICH BELONG-- _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ CRUMP FOLK GOING HOME THE LONELY PLOUGH THE OLD ROAD FROM SPAIN BEAUTIFUL END THE SPLENDID FAIRING THE TRUMPET IN THE DUST THE THINGS WHICH BELONG-- (“_The things which belong unto thy peace_”) BY CONSTANCE HOLME MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 49 RUPERT STREET LONDON, W.1 _Published 1925_ Made and printed in Great Britain at _The Mayflower Press, Plymouth_. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. AUTHOR’S NOTE The author wishes to say that, in spite of the “local colour” in this book, the situation between the characters is purely imaginary. CONTENTS PAGE PROLOGUE 9 PART I--HIS 19 PART II--HERS 125 PART III--THEIRS 229 THE THINGS WHICH BELONG-- PROLOGUE He dropped the pen.... More strictly speaking, it fell as if weighted from his fingers. He had an extraordinary feeling that he would never use a pen again. A flush came into Mattie’s face, but she said nothing. He had always expected that, if ever this moment arrived,--impossible as it had seemed that it ever _should_ arrive,--she would meet it with a flood of joyful speech; but now she was silent. It was the second time this evening that she had surprised him by her silence,--this wan and weary early-spring evening which marked the finish of a bleak and soulless day. Searching vaguely, however, among recollections which had left impression without form, he remembered that people often did fall silent at the late fulfilment of a long desire.... Instead of speaking, she sighed. It was such a sigh, he thought, as the dying give just before they pass on into new life. In that last breath there is everything that they see before them, and everything that they leave behind. Mattie’s sigh was like that. Not that she looked like dying, as she got to her feet at last, heavily a little, but pushing her chair from her more quietly than usual, not in the almost rough way she used sometimes, as if the very furniture of the house clogged and held her ardent spirit. She stood beside him a moment, looking down at the letter he had just written, a splendid woman, growing old,--and older in the evenings than in the mornings,--but still full of vitality and fire. Again he expected her to break out into some form of expression, either of satisfaction or relief, but still she said nothing. Sometimes, as he knew, on occasions of this kind, relief took the form of a recapitulation of past miseries, and he would not have been surprised if Mattie had shown hers in that fashion. But dumbness seemed to have fallen upon her. Even her face had grown strangely inexpressive. There was no hint in it that she was thinking either of old sorrow or new joy. It was simply blank, as if it was no longer able to register the workings of the mind that lay behind it.