He sat still for some time after she had gone, feeling a little defrauded and more than a little exasperated. Even now, when she had spoken, her voice had told him nothing. It was rather unfair, he said to himself.... It seemed incredible that the great moment of her life should have come and gone, and that she should have had so few words,--and none too comprehensible words, either,--with which to greet it. But she was glad,--he did not need telling that; so glad, perhaps, that only tears could really express her gladness. Probably she was crying upstairs, even now, weeping the tears which it is better not to stop. Because it was wiser to let her weep he stayed on where he was, watching the night deepen over the gardens and droop closer upon his cottage. He was glad, too, he said to himself; relieved, too, even though he did not feel inclined to weep about it. He felt instead that lightness which comes with choice after a long and difficult approach to a parting of the ways. He told himself as he waited that he had only hesitated until now because he knew that the moment had not arrived. He had hesitated and rebelled, and therefore he had suffered; but he did not suffer now. On the contrary, in this curious, almost unbelievable way, he actually felt glad. He got up, after a while, and on a sudden impulse went and opened the house-door. He knew that the gardens were there, the moment he did that. It was only through the window that they seemed to have faded away. He could feel them stretching about him on either hand; could see, without knowing how he saw, the actual shapes of bed and tree. But to-night he felt no thrilling link with the place which had been in his charge for the last forty years. He had passed on, as Mattie had long ago passed on. He had written the letter, and he was glad. Without being conscious that he had done so, he left the door still open when he went upstairs to bed. PART I HIS I The letter was still there when he came down.... He had known that it would be there, of course,--had, indeed, lain awake half the night, thinking about it,--but he was surprised to see it, nevertheless. More and more, as he thought, it had taken upon itself the quality of a dream; so that, when he saw it again, a white shape set upon an expanse of red-clothed kitchen table, it met him with a shock. He put it away from him, however, at once. After that first glance, which was not so much a glance as an actual physical encounter thrust upon him as he came in, he did not look at it again. But he was aware of it even while he refused to recognise it. He ignored it, indeed, with something of the self-conscious effort with which one ignores a vivid human presence, going about his tasks as if under actual human eyes. That he was oppressed by it was evident from the way in which he flung the window wide and the door wider, as if in an attempt to get rid of something which threatened to take up its permanent abode.