and me.  You should have let them remain nothing to the end.  But you did not.  What were they to you?—­Shapes, shadows on a sheet.  They looked real.  But were they—­any one of them?  You will never see them again; you will never see me again; we shall be all parts of a past of shadows.  If you had been as I am, you could have looked back upon them unmoved or could have forgotten....  But you ... ‘you only loved’ and you will have no more ease.  And, even now, it is only yourself that matters.  It is because you broke; because you were false to your standards at a supreme moment; because you have discovered that your honour will not help you to stand a strain.  It is not the thought of the harm you have done the others....  What are they—­what is Churchill who has fallen or Fox who is dead—­to you now?  It is yourself that you bemoan.  That is your tragedy, that you can never go again to Churchill with the old look in your eyes, that you can never go to anyone for fear of contempt....  Oh, I know you, I know you.”

She knew me.  It was true, what she said.

I had had my eyes on the ground all this while; now I looked at her, trying to realise that I should never see her again.  It was impossible.  There was that intense beauty, that shadowlessness that was like translucence.  And there was her voice.  It was impossible to understand that I was never to see her again, never to hear her voice, after this.

She was silent for a long time and I said nothing—­nothing at all.  It was the thought of her making Fox’s end; of her sitting as Fox had sat, hopelessly, lifelessly, like a man waiting at the end of the world.  At last she said:  “There is no hope.  We have to go our ways; you yours, I mine.  And then if you will—­if you cannot forget—­you may remember that I cared; that, for a moment, in between two breaths, I thought of ... of failing.  That is all I can do ... for your sake.”

That silenced me.  Even if I could have spoken to any purpose, I would have held my tongue now.

I had not looked at her; but stood with my eyes averted, very conscious of her standing before me; of her great beauty, of her great glory.

* * * * *

After a long time I went away.  I never saw her again.  I never saw any one of them all again.  Fox was dead and Churchill I have never had the heart to face.  That was the end of all that part of my life.  It passed away and left me only a consciousness of weakness and ... and regrets.  She remains.  One recognises her hand in the trend of events.  Well, it is not a very gay world.  Gurnard, they say, is the type of the age—­of its spirit.  And they say that I, the Granger of Etchingham, am not on terms with my brother-in-law.