“Mary tells me you’re not feeling very fit.”

He was utterly gentle, as he was with all sick and suffering things.

“I’m all right.  That’s not why I want to see you.”

He was faintly surprised.  “What is it, then?  Sit down and tell me.”

She sat down.  They had Steven’s table as a barrier between them.

“You’ve been thinking of leaving Rathdale, haven’t you?” she said.

“I’ve been thinking of leaving it for the last seven years.  But I haven’t left it yet.  I don’t suppose I shall leave it now.”

“Even when you’ve got the chance?”

“Even when I’ve got the chance.”

“You said you wanted to go, and you do, don’t you?”

“Well, yes—­for some things.”

“Would you think me an awful brute if I said I wanted you to go?”

He gave her a little queer, puzzled look.

“I wouldn’t think you a brute whatever you wanted.  Do you mind my smoking a cigarette?”

“No.”

She waited.

“Steven—­

“I wish I hadn’t made you stay.”

“You’re not making me stay.”

“I mean—­that time.  Do you remember?”

He smiled a little smile of reminiscent tenderness.

“Yes, yes.  I remember.”

“I didn’t understand, Steven.”

“Well, well.  There’s no need to go back on that now.  It’s done, Gwenda.”

“Yes.  And I did it.  I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known what it meant.  I didn’t think it would have been like this.”

“Like what?”

Rowcliffe’s smile that had been reminiscent was now vague and obscurely speculative.

“I ought to have let you go when you wanted to,” she said.

Rowcliffe looked down at the table.  She sat leaning sideways against it; one thin arm was stretched out on it.  The hand gripped the paper weight that he had pushed away.  It was this hand, so tense and yet so helpless, that he was looking at.  He laid his own over it gently.  Its grip slackened then.  It lay lax under the sheltering hand.

“Don’t worry about that, my dear,” he said.  “It’s been all right——­”

“It hasn’t.  It hasn’t.”

Rowcliffe’s nerves winced before her fierce intensity.  He withdrew his sheltering hand.

“Just at first,” she said, “it was all right.  But you see—­it’s broken down.  You said it would.”

“You mustn’t keep on bothering about what I said.”

“It isn’t what you said.  It’s what is.  It’s this place.  We’re all tied up together in it, tight.  We can’t get away from each other.  It isn’t as if I could leave.  I’m stuck here with Papa.”

“My dear Gwenda, did I ever say you ought to leave?”

“No.  You said you ought.  It’s the same thing.”

“It isn’t.  And I don’t say it now.  What is the earthly use of going back on things?  That’s what makes you ill.  Put it straight out of your mind.  You know I can’t help you if you go on like this.”