One afternoon his former rector appeared, and with tremulous cordiality wished him God-speed, assuming that the sea voyage was the result of doctor’s advice. And it was when the old man was gone, and he was alone again, that, for the first time, with a spasm of pain, he caught a glimpse of the deception he was practising. But some irresistible force within him urged him forward--he was powerless--to look back was impossible now--there was more yet to be done--he must go on--there was no time to stop to think. So to deaden the rising conscience-pangs, he fiercely reminded himself that now, but five days more separated her from him. He sat down to write to his bishop and resign his living, struggling with ambiguous, formal phrases, impetuously attributing to his physical weakness his inability to frame them. The letter at length finished, instinctively dreading fresh gnawings of uneasiness, he forced himself feverishly into thinking of plans for the future, busying his mind with time-tables, searching for particulars of steamers, turning over the leaves of his bank-book. All the money which his father had left to him had remained untouched: for three years they could live comfortably on the capital; meanwhile he would have found some work. At last, when, with the growing twilight, the hills outside were hurriedly darkening, he sank back wearily in his chair. And all at once he perceived with dismay that nothing remained for him to do, nothing with which he could occupy his mind. For the moment he was alone with himself, and looking backwards, realisation of the eager facility with which he had successively severed each link, and the rapidity with which he had set himself drifting towards a future, impenetrable with mysterious uncertainty, stole over him. He had done it all, he told himself, deliberately, unaided; bewildered, he tried to bring himself face to face with his former self, to survey himself as he had been before the fever--that afternoon when he had gone up to Beda Cottages--plodding indifferently through life in the joyless, walled-in valley, which, he now understood, had in a measure reflected the spirit of his own listless broodings. Scared remorse seized him. The prospect of departure, now that it was close at hand, frightened him; left him aching as with the burden of dead weight, so that, for a while, he remained inert, dully acquiescing in his accumulating disquietude. Then, in desperation, he invoked her figure, imagining a dozen incoherent versions of the coming scene--the tense words of greeting, his passionate pleading, her impulsive yielding, and the acknowledgment of her trust in him.... By-and-bye, Mrs. Parkin brought him his dinner. He chatted to her with apparent unconcern, jested regarding his appetite; for a curious calm, the lucidity evoked by suppressed elation, pervaded him.