She stopped then, and into her eyes came the fixed stare of one who regards a great and imminent danger. The cry which came out of her throat was no longer the cry of one beating against walls, but the cry of one who drowns.... “Nay, but we can’t! We can’t! I’m cheating myself again. Just cheating myself, that’s all.... I’ll never get to Canada, not this side o’ the Judgment!” Flinging herself heavily into her seat, she laid her head on her arms, and her great sobs shook the silence. Outside in the darkness a little wind got up, sighed along the paths and was gone again into the darkness. An owl called, flapping with clumsy wings across the square of the window, and went out towards the river. A sweet breath came in from the gardens, where there were no flowers as yet to scent them. Kirkby sat where he was for a long time, with his gaze fixed upon his wife’s bowed head and labouring shoulders. It was the only way, as he knew, to put a real end to the business, to exorcise, by those cruel tears, the demon of her forty years’ obsession. Canada went out of her as she wept, and all the beautiful hope which for so long it had represented. Through every pore of her, as it were, ran out the poison of her misery and discontent. She would be broken, perhaps, when she came to herself, but she would no longer be tormented. She would be older, perhaps,--perhaps permanently grown old,--but she might also have found the things which belonged truly to her peace.... Yet even in the restraint of his measured wisdom he could not refrain from making some attempt to comfort her. From time to time he put out an apparently unnoticed hand, and drew it back again. Presently, when he could bear the situation no longer, he got up and stood beside her. He said: “Don’t cry, Mattie!... Mattie, don’t cry,” smoothing her roughened hair and patting her shoulder and cheek. She paid no attention, as far as he could gather, until presently the sobs quietened and the shaking lessened. And instantly, as if at some signal for which he had patiently waited, he began to speak. “I just want to say again, Mattie, that we’ll go if you really want. Likely you’d rather leave it over until the morning, but I doubt it wouldn’t be wise. I couldn’t go through this sort of thing very often, nor you, neither. We’d be best to fix it to-night.... And you don’t need telling that, if you could make up your mind to it, I’d a deal rather not go. I’ve had as bad a day thinking about it all as I ever remember.” His detachment broke a little, and pain crept into his voice. “I’ve loved the place, and I doubt I can’t leave it.” “I’ve hated it, and I can’t leave it!” Mattie sobbed, lifting her head a moment and letting it drop again. “There’s some sorts of hate as is very near love,” Kirkby said absently, without hearing what he was saying. “Only just now you said that to-day you’d seen it different.”