She passed with a sigh of relief to the thought of all that would have to be done before she could get away. Her heart rose to the task as she remembered it. Work,--and especially organising work,--had always been a pleasure to her, and this would mean more than pleasure. In the rush of planning and packing, of solving the many problems which would undoubtedly arise, she would easily lose sight of the few burdens that were weighing on her spirit. At the moment, however, she had no intention of beginning to pull the house to pieces, or even of starting upon such minor operations as going through drawers and cupboards. There would be no sense in making the place uncomfortable before she was obliged. The day would be full enough, as it was, what with the ordinary routine and the letters which had to be written; not to speak of the long hours of dreaming and gloating to which she would certainly fall captive. There would be plenty to do, of course, when the moment arrived, but it would be done all right, and done like so much clockwork. In any case, her house, always in order and always clean, was not the sort that had almost to be built over again before it was fit to leave. It was not overcrowded, either, with those things which accumulate as the years go on, so unconsciously, sometimes, that they seem to have grown out of the very stuff of life itself. Broadly speaking, she was almost as free of unnecessary belongings as a seabird poised for flight on the edge of a naked cliff. Yet almost without knowing what she was doing she was setting her hand to the lever which Fate had so tardily thrust into it. Even while she was making the breakfast she was moving a few things here and there, rejecting this and accepting that, and hunting for paper and string with which to pack them. It was more than likely that they would have to be unpacked again, later on, even if, in a future scheme of things, they were not left behind altogether. But the excitement of putting the work in train was impossible to resist. With each parcel she packed her heart rose a little higher. Every change in the standing order of things was an added assurance that that order was at an end. The desire to alter it even further grew upon her when breakfast was over and Kirkby had returned to his duties. A great restlessness possessed her. It was almost as if the long strain of waiting for what she wanted had sapped her power to believe in it when it came; as if she feared that, unless she instantly took advantage of it, it might still manage to evade her....