“You can.”

“My dear, I wish I knew how.  You asked me to stay and I stayed.  I can understand that.”

“If I asked you to go, would you go, Steven?  Would you understand that too?”

“My dear child, what good would that do you?”

“I want you to go, Steven.”

“You want me to go?”

He screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to see the thing clearly.

“Yes,” she said.

He shook his head.  He had given it up.

“No, my dear, you don’t want me to go.  You only think you do.  You don’t know what you want.”

“I shouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

“Wouldn’t you!  It’s exactly what you would say.  Do you suppose I don’t know you?”

She had both her arms stretched before him on the table now.  The hands were clasped.  The little thin hands implored him.  Her eyes implored him.  In the tense clasp and in the gaze there was the passion of entreaty that she kept out of her voice.

But Rowcliffe did not see it.  He had shifted his position, sinking a little lower into his chair, and his head was bowed before her.  His eyes, somberly reflective, looked straight in front of him under their bent brows.

He seemed to be really considering whether he would go or stay.

“No,” he said presently.  “No, I’m not going.”

But he was dubious and deliberate.  It was as if he still weighed it, still watched for the turning of the scale.

The clock across the market-place struck eight.  He gathered himself together.  And it was then as if the strokes, falling on his ear, set free some blocked movement in his brain.

“No,” he said, “I don’t see how I can go, as things are.  Besides—­it isn’t necessary.”

“I see,” she said.

* * * * *

She rose.  She gave him a long look.  A look that was still incredulous of what it saw.

His eyes refused to meet it as he rose also.

They stood so for a moment without any speech but that of eyes lifted and eyes lowered.

Still without a word, she turned from him to the door.

He sprang to open it.

* * * * *

Five minutes later he was aware that his wife had come into the room.

“Has Gwenda gone?” he said.

“Yes.  Steven——­” There was a small, fluttering fright in Mary’s eyes.  “Is there anything the matter with her?”

“No,” he said.  “Nothing.  Except living with your father.”

LXVI

Gwenda had no feeling in her as she left Rowcliffe’s house.  Her heart hid in her breast.  It was so mortally wounded as to be unaware that it was hurt.

But at the turn of the white road her heart stirred in its hiding-place.  It stirred at the sight of Karva and with the wind that brought her the smell of the flowering thorn-trees.