“You don’t suppose I really could have left you?”

He saw that it was impossible, unthinkable, that he should leave her.

He rose.  She went with him to the door.  She thought of something there.

“Steven,” she said, “don’t worry about to-night.  It was all my fault.”

“You—­you,” he murmured.  “You’re adorable.”

“It was really,” she said.  “I made you come in.”

She gave him her cold hand.  He raised it and brushed it with his lips and put it from him.

“Your little conscience was always too tender.”

LV

Two years passed.

Life stirred again in the Vicarage, feebly and slowly, with the slow and feeble stirring of the Vicar’s brain.

Ten o’clock was prayer time again.

Twice every Sunday the Vicar appeared in his seat in the chancel.  Twice he pronounced the Absolution.  Twice he tottered to the altar rails, turned, shifted his stick from his left hand to his right, and, with his one good arm raised, he gave the Benediction.  These were the supreme moments of his life.

Once a month, kneeling at the same altar rails, he received the bread and wine from the hands of his ritualistic curate, Mr. Grierson.

It was his uttermost abasement.

But, whether he was abased or exalted, the parish was proud of its Vicar.  He had shown grit.  His parishioners respected the indestructible instinct that had made him hold on.

* * * * *

For Mr. Cartaret was better, incredibly better.  He could creep about the house and the village without any help but his stick.  He could wash and feed and dress himself.  He had no longer any use for his wheel-chair.  Once a week, on a Wednesday, he was driven over his parish in an ancient pony carriage of Peacock’s.  It was low enough for him to haul himself in and out.

And he had recovered large tracts of memory, all, apparently, but the one spot submerged in the catastrophe that had brought about his stroke.  He was aware of events and of their couplings and of their sequences in time, though the origin of some things was not clear to him.  Thus he knew that Alice was married and living at Upthorne, though he had forgotten why.  That she should have married Greatorex was a strange thing, and he couldn’t think how it had happened.  He supposed it must have happened when he was laid aside, for he would never have permitted it if he had known.  Mary’s marriage also puzzled him, for he had a most distinct idea that it was Gwenda who was to have married Rowcliffe, and he said so.  But he would own humbly that he might be mistaken, his memory not being what it was.