Janet walked quickly through the darkening country. A power from behind seemed to be driving her on—a hot, smoky power of uttermost shame. It was symbolised by the thunder-vapour that curled in the east, a black, swagging cloud that lumbered towards the sunset over reaches of heat-washed sky.

She hardly realised how she had won through that interview at Redpale Farm. The details were dim and jumbled in her memory, like the details of what has taken place just before an accident or during an illness. She hoped she had not been undignified, but really did not care very much about it. The tension which had characterised both her calmness and her hysteria was gone—her emotions seemed to flop. Unlike so many women, pride gave her no support in her dreadful hour.

But her feelings were merely relaxed, not subdued, and her loose, run-down nerves quivered as agonisedly as during their stretch and strain. The realisation of all she had lost swept over her heart, engulfing it. The very fields through which she walked were part of this realisation—it was here, or it was there, that she had stood with Quentin on such and such a day, or had watched him coming towards her out of the mist-blurred distance, or seen him go from her, stopping to[Pg 229] raise his arm in farewell, just there, where the foxgloves lifted purple poles in the ditches of Starswhorne. She could see the thickets of Furnace Wood, hazed over with heat—they were haunted now, she would never go near Furnace Wood again. Two ghosts wandered up and down its heat-baked paths, rustled in the hazels, and stood where the tufted hedge shut off Furnace Field—loving and dumb. They were not the ghosts of dead bodies, but of dead selves—of two who walked apart in distant ways, who would never again meet each other save in memory and in sleep.

A metallic hardness had dropped upon the day. The arch of the sky was steel, sunless, yet bright with a cold sheen; at the rim it dipped to copper, hot and sullen, save where in the west two brazen bars sent out harsh lights to rest on the fields and make them too like brass.

Janet at last reached Sparrow Hall, and as she did so, for the first time felt physical fatigue. It came upon her in a spasm—she was just able to stagger into the kitchen, and sink down in her accustomed chair, every muscle aching and exhausted, her head splitting with pain, and her body shuddering with a sudden and unaccountable sickness.

For some time she did not move, she just fought with the sheer physical discomfort of it all. Her head lay on the table, her arms were spread over the wood, and the collapsed line of her shoulders was of utter powerlessness and pain. Then two tears rolled slowly from her eyes—they were part of her physical plight, and for it alone she wept.[Pg 230] For the sorrow of her soul it seemed as if she could only weep dry salt.

Oh, merciful God!—Quentin looked upon her love as his ruin, and turned from her in panic to another woman. In this other love he would find the peace and happiness and goodness that Janey had ached and striven for years to give him; he would learn to forget the wicked Janey Furlonger, whose love had all but been his perdition, who had brought him to sin and torture and despair—and now would lie in the background of his heart, as an evil thing we cover up and pray to forget. This young, innocent girl would save him from his memories of the woman who had given more for his sake than Tony Strife would ever dream of giving. He did not realise her sacrifice—she had given up for his sake the innocence and purity that were more to her simple soul than life, and now he turned from her because she had them not.

Then for the first time a convulsion of wrath seized Janey. For the first time she saw the cruelty and outrage of it all. Her anger blazed up—against Quentin, against the world, against herself. His last letter lay on the table. She seized it, and thrust it into the fire. Then she noticed the box that held his other letters. She seized that too, and crammed it into the grate. Long tongues of flame shot out, and suddenly one of them caught her dress—she screamed, flames and smoke seemed to wrap her round, and in madness she rushed to the door. A man was in the passage. He[Pg 231] grasped her, and held her to him, beating out the flames.

"Quentin!" she shrieked, "Quentin! Quentin!"

"Janey—darling sister! There! it\'s all over now. The fire\'s out. Are you much hurt?"

"Quentin! Quentin!"

Leonard picked her up bodily, and carried her into the kitchen, sitting down by the fire with her on his knee. He began to examine her. Her skirt was nothing but charred rags, her face and hands were black with grime, and there was a horrible smell of singed hair, but she did not seem to be actually burnt. She was trembling from head to feet, her face hidden against his breast.

"I don\'t think you\'re really hurt, dear. What a lucky chance I happened to be there! If I\'d done as I said and gone to Cherrygarden, you might have been burnt to death. How did you do it, Janey?"

"I was burning Quentin\'s letters.... Oh, Quentin! Quentin!"

The last dregs of Janey\'s self-control were gone. Anxiety, shock, grief, humiliation, love, despair and sickening, physical fright, all crowded into a few short hours, had almost deprived her of her reason.

"Quentin! Quentin!" she cried, clinging to Leonard.

She was so tall that he had difficulty in holding her on his knee while she struggled.

"Janey, I can\'t understand, dearest. Who\'s Quentin?—not Quentin Lowe?"

[Pg 232]

"Yes—Quentin Lowe. Lenny, Lenny—he doesn\'t love me any more."

Leonard kissed her smoke-grimed face repeatedly. He was utterly bewildered.

"He doesn\'t love me any more," she continued, gasping. "He loves Tony Strife—he\'s going to marry her. Lenny, he\'s a devil."

"My darling, can\'t you tell me what it is? Did you ever love him?"

"Oh, I loved him! I loved him! I gave ............