There was a movement in the little group of villagers gathered on the bridge before the surgery door.  They slunk together and turned their backs on her as she passed.  They knew where she was going as well as she did.  And she didn’t care.

She was doing the sort of thing that Alice had done, and had suffered for doing.  She knew it and she didn’t care.  It didn’t matter what Alice had done or ever would do.  It didn’t matter what she did herself.  It was quite simple.  Nothing mattered to her so long as Rowcliffe lived.  And if he died nothing would ever matter to her again.

* * * * *

For she knew now what it was that had happened to her.  She could no longer humbug herself into insisting that it hadn’t happened.  The thing had been secret and treacherous with her, and she had been secret and treacherous with it.  She had refused to acknowledge it, not because she had been ashamed of it but because, with the dreadful instance of Alice before her eyes, she had been afraid.  She had been afraid of how it would appear to Rowcliffe.  He might see in it something morbid and perverted, something horribly like Ally.  She went in terror of the taint.  Where it should have held its head up defiantly and beautifully, it had been beaten back; it cowered and skulked in the dark places and waited for its hour.

And now that it showed itself naked, unveiled, unarmed, superbly defenseless, her terror of it ceased.

It had received a sanction that had been withheld from it before.

Until half an hour ago (she was aware of it) there had been something lacking in her feeling.  Mary and Ally (this she was not aware of) got more “out of” Rowcliffe, so to speak, than she did.  Gwenda had known nothing approaching to Mary’s serene and brooding satisfaction or Ally’s ecstasy.  She dreaded the secret gates, the dreamy labyrinths, the poisonous air of the Paradise of Fools.  In Rowcliffe’s presence she had not felt altogether safe or altogether happy.  But, if she stood on the edge of an abyss, at least she stood there, firm on the solid earth.  She could balance herself; she could even lean forward a little and look over, without losing her head, thrilled with the uncertainty and peril of the adventure.  And of course it wasn’t as if Rowcliffe had left her standing.  He hadn’t.  He had held out his hand to her, as it were, and said, “Let’s get on—­get on!” which was as good as saying that, as long as it lasted, it was their adventure, not hers.  He had drawn her after him at an exciting pace, along the edge of the abyss, never losing his head for a minute, so that she ought to have felt safe with him.  Only she hadn’t.  She had said to herself, “If I knew him better, if I saw what was in him, perhaps I should feel safe.”

There was something she wanted to see in him; something that her innermost secret self, fastidious and exacting, demanded from him before it would loosen the grip that held her back.