“And yet you’re anxious to run away from me as fast as you possibly can,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle. “And I shall be left all alone, all alone.” Her voice trembled; she shut her eyes, she contorted her face in an effort to keep it closed and rigid. Between her eyelids the tears came welling out. “All alone,” she repeated brokenly. Getting old, said the little clock on the mantel-piece, getting old, getting old. Irene knelt down beside her, took her hands between her own and kissed them, pressed them against her tear-wet face. “Aunt Lilian,” she begged, “Aunt Lilian.” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on sobbing. “Don’t cry,” said Irene, crying herself. She imagined that she alone was the cause of Aunt Lilian’s unhappiness. In reality, she was only the pretext; Mrs. Aldwinkle was weeping over her whole life, weeping at the approach of death. In that first moment of agonised sympathy and self-reproach, Irene was on the point of declaring that she would give up Hovenden, that she would spend all her life with her Aunt Lilian. But something held her back. Obscurely she was certain that it wouldn’t do, that it was impossible, that it would even be wrong. She loved Aunt Lilian and she loved Hovenden. In a way she loved Aunt Lilian more than Hovenden, now. But something in her that looked prophetically forward, something that had come through innumerable lives, out of the obscure depths of time, to dwell within her, held her back. The conscious and individual part of her spirit inclined towards Aunt Lilian. But consciousness and individuality—how precariously, how irrelevantly almost, they flowered out of that ancient root of life planted in the darkness of her being! The flower was for Aunt Lilian, the root for Hovenden. “But you won’t be all alone,” she protested. “We shall constantly be with you. You’ll come and stay with us.” The assurance did not seem to bring much consolation to Mrs. Aldwinkle. She went on crying. The clock ticked away as busily as ever. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III In the course of the last few days the entries in Miss Thriplow’s note-book had changed their character. From being amorous they had turned mystical. Savage and mindless passion was replaced by quiet contemplation. De Lespinasse had yielded to de Guyon.