In short snatches of troubled sleep she lived again through the scenes of the afternoon, saw him doubt, heard him question, gave flippant answers. In oases of wakefulness she felt his arms about her, and the restrained kisses that were like vows; conjured up thrilled moments when she knew how well he loved her. She began to dread those nightmare sleeps, and to force herself to keep awake. At four o’clock she consoled herself that it would soon be daylight. At five o’clock, after a desperate short nightmare of estrangement from which she awoke, quick-pulsed and pallid, she got up and put on a dressing-gown, drew up the blind, and opened wide the window. She watched the slow dawn and in the darkness heard the breakers on the stony beach. Nature calmed and quieted her. She began to think her fears had been foolish, to believe that she had not only played for safety but secured it, that the coming day would bring her the Gabriel she knew best, the humble and adoring lover. She pictured their coming together, his dear smile and restored confidence. He would have forgotten yesterday. The dawn she was watching illumined and lightened the sky. Soon the sun would rise grandly, already his place was roseate-hued. “Red sky in the morning is the shepherd’s warning,” runs the old proverb. But Margaret had never heard, or had forgotten it. To her the roseate dawn was all promise. The day before them should be exquisite as yesterday, and weld them with its warmth. She would withhold nothing from him, nothing of her love. Then peace would fall between them? and the renewal of love? At six o’clock she pulled down the blinds and went back to bed again, where for two hours she slept dreamlessly. Stevens woke her with the inevitable tea. “It can’t be morning yet? It is hardly light.” She struggled with her drowsiness. “I don’t hear rain, do I?” “There’s no saying what you hear, but it’s raining sure enough, a miserable morning for May.” “May! But it is nearly June!” “I’m not gainsaying the calendar.” “Pull up the blind.” A short time before she had gazed on a roseate dawn, now rain was driving pitilessly across the landscape, and all the sky was grey. No longer could she hear the breakers on the shore. All she heard was the rain. Stevens shut the window. “You’d best not be getting up early. There’s nothing to get up for on a morning like this. It’s not as if you was in the habit of going to church.” Margaret was conscious of depression. Stevens’s grumbling kept it at bay, and she detained her on one excuse or another; tried to extract humour from her habitual dissatisfaction. “It will be like this all day, you see if it isn’t. The rain is coming down straight, too, and the smoke’s blowing all ways.” She changed the subject abruptly, as maids will, intent on her duties. “I’ll have to be getting out your clothes. What do you think you’ll wear?” “I meant to try my new whipcord.”