Turning away from him, she moved almost aimlessly across the kitchen. It was as if she had been switched suddenly on to another plane, and did not know any longer what to do on this. Stooping, she put out her hand for the poker, as if meaning to stir the fire, but she put it out to the wrong side. That seemed to paralyse her more than ever. She seemed incapable of reaching across to it where it stood in its accustomed place, but remained stooping, her hand dropped loosely at her side. It was only after a long pause that she straightened herself slowly, and, swinging round, stared about the room with eyes which hardly seemed to recognise it. He continued to watch her, fascinated. It was all so _different_, he was saying to himself; not in the least what he had expected. If only she would speak!... It couldn’t be that she was disappointed?--he found himself thinking, startled; and suddenly there came into his mind the absurd fear that, in giving her what she wanted, he had perhaps taken away from her something that she wanted more.... She moved away from the hearth, and as she did so the firelight shot up, so that her shadow on the wall shot up, too, and became huge and menacing in the kitchen. Too big for the room, it pressed itself against ceiling and walls, as if trying to force a way out of what was no longer able to contain it. He watched it struggle for a moment, saw it sink and leap in a still more furious effort, and then the fire dropped and it dropped with it. He waited for it to shoot up again, expecting every second to see it beat and battle afresh. But it did not shoot up again. Instead, there came presently into the stillness a little tinkling sound which showed that the fire had dropped still lower. The window of the cottage had long since gone black, making a dark velvet background for the gold flower of the lamp at his elbow. The gardens outside were as blank as Mattie’s face, gone out as completely as if it was only in the daytime that they had any concrete existence. The letter on the table looked a white, untouched square, with the impress of his handwriting barely visible upon it. There was very little in the letter, but it had taken a long time to put it down. They had been so long over it, indeed, that already it was time for bed. The kitchen clock told them that, breaking the silence almost impertinently, and Mattie started. And then she, too, broke silence. “Eh, well! So that’s the end of that!” she said, from the stairfoot, speaking apparently not so much to him as to a hundred other things about her; and, turning determinedly towards the stairs without further comment, mounted them with her strong though heavy step, and vanished.