As yet, when all is thought and said, The heart still overrules the head;

Still what we hope we must believe,

And what is given us receive;

Must still believe, for still we hope

That in a world of larger scope,

What here is faithfully begun

Will be completed, not undone.

My child, we still must think, when we

That ampler life together see,

Some true results will yet appear

Of what we are, together, here.

—A. H. Clough, Poem (1849)

Charles hesitated in the shabby hall, then knocked on the door of a room that was ajar and from which light came. He was bade enter, and so found himself face to face with the proprietress. Much quicker than he summed her up, she summed him: a fifteen-shillinger beyond mistake. Therefore she smiled gratefully.

“A room, sir?”

“No. I ... that is, I wish to speak with one of your ... a Miss Woodruff?” Mrs. Endicott’s smile abruptly gave way to a long face. Charles’s heart dropped. “She is not... ?”

“Oh the poor young lady, sir, she was a-coming downstairs the day before yesterday morning and she slipped, sir. She’s turned her ankle something horrible. Swole up big as a mar-row. I wanted to ask the doctor, sir, but she won’t hear of it. ‘Tis true a turned ankle mends itself. And physicians come very expensive.”

Charles looked at the end of his cane. “Then I cannot see her.”

“Oh bless me, you can go up, sir. ‘Twill raise her spirits. You’ll be some relative, I daresay?”

“I have to see her ... on a business matter.”

Mrs. Endicott’s respect deepened. “Ah ... a gentleman of the law?”

Charles hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

“Then you must go up, sir.”

“I think ... would you please send to ask if my visit were not better put off till she is recovered?”

He felt very much at a loss. He remembered Varguennes; sin was to meet in privacy. He had come merely to inquire; had hoped for a downstairs sitting room—somewhere both intimate and public. The old woman hesitated, then cast a quick eye at a certain open box beside her rolltop desk and apparently decided that even lawyers can be thieves—a possi-bility few who have had to meet their fees would dispute. Without moving and with a surprising violence she called for one Betty Anne.

Betty Anne appeared and was sent off with a visiting card. She seemed gone some time, during which Charles had to repel a number of inquisitive attempts to discover his errand. At last Betty Anne came back: he was prayed to go up. He followed the plump maid’s back to the top floor and was shown the scene of the accident. The stairs were certainly steep; and in those days, when they could rarely see their own feet, women were always falling: it was a commonplace of domestic life.

They came to a door at the end of a mournful corridor. Charles, his heart beating far faster than even the three flights of steep stairs had warranted, was brusquely an-nounced.

“The gennelmun, miss.”

He stepped into the room. Sarah was seated by the fire in a chair facing the door, her feet on a stool, with both them and her legs covered by a red Welsh blanket. The green merino shawl was round her shoulders, but could not quite hide the fact that she was in a long-sleeved nightgown. Her hair was loose and fell over her green shoulders. She seemed to him much smaller—and agonizingly shy. She did not smile, but looked down at her hands—only, as he first came in, one swift look up, like a frightened penitent, sure of his anger, before she bowed her head again. He stood with his hat in one hand, his stick and gloves in the other.

“I was passing through Exeter.”

Her head bowed a fraction deeper in a mingled under-standing and shame.

“Had I not better go at once and fetch a doctor?”

She spoke into her lap. “Please not. He would only advise me to do what I am already doing.”

He could not take his eyes from her—to see her so pinioned, so invalid (though her cheeks were a deep pink), helpless. And after that eternal indigo dress—the green shawl, the never before fully revealed richness of that hair. A faint cedary smell of liniment crept into Charles’s nostrils.

“You are not in pain?”

She shook her head. “To do such a thing ... I cannot understand how I should be so foolish.”

“At any rate be thankful that it did not happen in the Undercliff.”

“Yes.”

She seemed hopelessly abashed by his presence. He glanced round the small room. A newly made-up fire burned in the grate. There were some tired stems of narcissus in a Toby jug on the mantelpiece. But the meanness of the furnishing was painfully obvious, and an added embarrassment. On the ceil-ing were blackened patches—fumes from the oil lamp; like so many spectral relics of countless drab past occupants of the room.

“Perhaps I should ...”

“No. Please. Sit down. Forgive me. I ... I did not expect...” He placed his things on the chest of drawers, then sat at the only other, a wooden chair by the table, across the room from her. How should she expect, in spite of her letter, what he had himself so firmly ruled out of the question? He sought for some excuse.

“You have communicated your address to Mrs. Tranter?”

She shook her head. Silence. Charles stared at the carpet.

“Only to myself?”

Again her head bowed. He nodded gravely, as if he had guessed as much. And then there was more silence. An angry flurry of rain spattered against the panes of the window behind her.

Charles said, “That is what I have come to discuss.”

She waited, but he did not go on. Again his eyes were fixed on her. The nightgown buttoned high at the neck and at her wrists. Its whiteness shimmered rose in the firelight, for the lamp on the table beside him was not turned up very high. And her hair, already enhanced by the green shawl, was ravishingly alive where the firelight touched it; as if all her mystery, this most intimate self, was exposed before him: proud and submissive, bound and unbound, his slave and his equal. He knew why he had come: it was to see her again. Seeing her was the need; like an intolerable thirst that had to be assuaged.

He forced himself to look away. But his eyes lighted on the two naked marble nymphs above the fireplace: they too took rose in the warm light reflected from the red blanket. They did not help. And Sarah made a little movement. He had to look back to her.

She had raised her hand quickly to her bowed head. Her fingers brushed something away from her cheek, then came to rest on her throat.

&ld............