A WAY in Yorkshire, on a fell-side, a woman was sitting on a grey stone and looking at the landscape before her.  
Below her, some couple of hundred feet, ran a little brown stream, on the banks of which a man in tweed clothes was walking. He held a fishing-rod, and every now and then he paused to cast a fly upon the water with a light and dexterous hand.
 
The woman watched him idly. Later he would join her by a clump of trees near the stream, and they would have luncheon together. The man’s name was Luke Preston, and he was her husband. They had been married exactly a fortnight previously, and were now spending part of their honeymoon in Yorkshire.
 
The landscape, and particularly the sight of the distant figure by the stream, gave her a great sense of rest. In some ways Luke was like the fells around her she thought—very big, very silent, and very enduring. It was the unwavering assurance of Luke that had first attracted him to her. There was something so unswerving abouthis point of view. It was so direct. There were never more than two ways in his mind—the right and the wrong; never more than two colours—black and white. There were no little chance bypaths, and no shades of grey admissible. Because of this some people found Luke lacking in subtlety, but to the woman he had married it constituted a strength which she found very pleasant.
 
All her life she had been swayed by varying moods. Actions seldom appeared to her in a light of her own opinion. They became black, white, or various shades of lighter or darker grey as they were presented to her by the minds of others. There was one episode only in her life in which she had resolutely adhered to her own determination. And that episode was one she wished to forget, or to remember only as a dream, and not as a time connected with her own waking self.
 
It had all happened a good many years ago, and some people have a curious faculty for disconnecting themselves mentally from their own past actions. Sybil Preston was one of these. During the years that had elapsed since the episode she had had one thing only to remind her of it—a quaint signet ring, with which she had never had the courage to part.
 
On the way up to Yorkshire, the very day of her wedding, she had lost it. She fancied it must have slipped from her finger as she had waved [Pg 252]to a small girl swinging on a gate. But she had not discovered her loss till the evening when they had stopped for the night at an hotel. In a sense she regretted the loss, yet on the other hand she could not help feeling it a relief. She regarded it in a way as a kind of omen—a sign that the past was banished forever, especially as the loss had occurred on the very day she had entered her new life.
 
The episode was known only to herself and to one other living person—a woman friend of hers. She had no smallest fear but that Cecily Mainwaring had kept silence regarding it—would always keep silence. She was a woman with extraordinary strength of character and great reserve. She had always been a staunch friend of Sybil’s. Sybil herself had sometimes marvelled that in this matter she had been able to stand firm against Cecily’s opinion; in fact, to persuade her to her own point of view regarding it. Though, to be strictly truthful, Cecily had never adopted Sybil’s point of view, she had acted contrary to her own judgment, and purely from her unswerving friendship to Sybil. They had never again referred to the matter. Sybil had seen considerably less of Cecily after it. She had never felt entirely comfortable in her presence. Cecily’s eyes were too terribly truthful. They were not unlike Luke’s eyes.
 
 
Sybil, sitting up on the moorland, heaved an enormous sigh of relief at the thought that he could never have the smallest suspicion of that episode. She knew that deceit of any kind was the one thing Luke could never forgive. She knew, however, that she was perfectly safe. She would soon be safe herself from all memory of it. To-morrow they were returning to London, and a month hence they were sailing for India. Luke was in the Indian Civil Service, and would be returning after a year’s leave. For some years at least they would be out of England, and there would be no chance of meeting Cecily, who just served to remind her of things she now wanted to forget entirely.
 
And then she saw her husband winding in his line and waving to her. She got up and went down the side of the fell towards him.
 
“Been lonely, little girl?” he asked, putting his arm round her. “I’ve got five beauties. We’ll have them for supper to-night. Now come along and have some lunch. I’m simply ravenous.”
 
“So am I,” laughed Sybil. “What a glorious place it is, and how delicious the air is, and how utterly happy I am.”
 
“Darling,” he said, and bent to kiss her.
 
They walked towards the clump of trees where Luke had left a knapsack containing various eatables. They were simple enough—a couple of [Pg 254]packets of sandwiches, a couple of pieces of cake, and a flask of claret. He was not the man to burden himself with unnecessary food.
 
Sybil sat down on the grass, leaning back against a tree-trunk.
 
“I wish we could stay on here,” she said. “It would be infinitely pleasanter than going back to town.”
 
“Infinitely,” said Luke, taking a great bite of chicken sandwich.
 
“Then why not write and tell your people that we can’t come, and that we’re staying on here.”
 
Luke laughed. “Because, darling, there is no earthly reason beyond our own inclination to prevent us going back to London. And I promised my parents that we would come to them during the last part of July. They go down to Henley in August, and their cottage is too small to take us in there.”
 
Sybil pouted. “Can’t you get out of it, though?” she said. “I could sprain my ankle, or break my leg, or something, and be unable to travel.”
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