on her part it had lacked the warmth of love, she had acknowledged to be finer than any friendship.  That beautiful intangible quality had perished in the stress of their final meeting.  And even if it came to life again it could never be the same, or so she thought.  She had perceived how much its permanence had depended on external barriers, on the social gulf, and on the dividing presence of another woman.  She could not separate him from his genius; and his genius had long ago overleapt the social gulf.  And now, without poor Flossie, without the safeguard of his engagement, she felt herself insecure and shelterless.  More than ever since he had overleapt that barrier too.

But though Lucia had found out all these things, she had not yet found out why it was that she had been so glad to hear that Keith Rickman was going to be married, nor why she had been so passionately eager to keep him to his engagement.  In any case she could not have borne to be the cause of unhappiness to another woman; and that motive was so natural that it served for all.

As things had turned out, if he had married, that, she had understood, would have been such a closing of the door as would have shut him out for ever.  And now that he was knocking at the door again, now that there was no reason why, once opened, it should not remain open, she began to be afraid of what might enter in with him.  She made up her mind that she would not let him in.  So she sat down and wrote a cold little note to say that she was afraid she would not be able to see him next week.  Could he not explain the business in writing?  She took that letter to the post herself.  And as each step brought her nearer to the inevitable act, the conviction grew on her that this conduct of hers was cowardly, and unworthy both of him and of herself.  A refusal to see him was a confession of fear, and fear assumed the existence of the very thing his letter had ignored.  It was absurd too, if he had come to see that his feeling for her was (as she persisted in believing it to be) a piece of poetic folly, an illusion of the literary imagination.  She turned back and tore up that cold little note, and wrote another that said she would be very glad to see him any day next week, except Friday.  There was no reason why she should have excepted Friday; but it sounded more business-like somehow.

She did not take Kitty into her confidence, and in this she failed to perceive the significance of her own secrecy.  She told herself that there was no need to ask Kitty’s advice, because she knew perfectly well already what Kitty’s advice would be.

He came on Tuesday.  Monday was too early for his self-respect, Wednesday too late for his impatience.  He had looked to find everything altered in and about Court House; and he saw, almost with surprise, the same April flowers growing in the green garden, and the same beech-tree dreaming on the lawn.  He recognized the black rifts in its trunk and the shining sweep of its branches overhead.  The door was opened by Robert, and Robert remembered him.  There was a shade more gravity in the affectionate welcome, but then Robert was nine years older.  He was shown into the drawing-room, and it, too, was much as he had left it nine years ago.