as the glistening snow-laden branches above him, for it was plain from the confident set of his shoulders and the loose grip of his hand on his stick that he was unaware that any situation existed which was not easily negotiable.  They had evidently told him nothing at Torque Hall to destroy the impression she must have created by her last letter to him in which she had described her acceptance of Peacey’s offer of a formal marriage.  They had not dared, for they knew how terrible he would be when he moved to avenge her.  But he lifted his eyes and ran to her and took her in his arms, and did not cease to kiss her till she sobbed out what they had done to her.  Then it was as if a wind had blown and the snow had fallen from the branches, leaving them but dark, gnarled wood.

“But why did you marry him?”

“The people stoned me in the street and I could get no peace at home.”

“Couldn’t you have tried to stand it?”

“I was afraid for the boy.”

“Then why couldn’t you have gone away?”

“How could I when I was so ill?  Why did not you come back?”

“How could I leave the prince and princess?”

She was aghast to find them quarrelling, and while he drew a shuddering breath between his teeth, she interrupted:  “Oh, Richard is so lovely!  You must see him soon.  Oh, such a boy!”

But he had paid no heed and shakingly poured out words since it was so like the harmless spite of a child that beats young to old, her blood from that of a loved girl to a hating woman.  He found the situation, she had thought at the time, and still thought after thirty years, far less negotiable than a high love would have done.  It did not occur to him that he might take her away.  He took it for granted that thereafter they must be lost to each other.  But save for his desire to blame her for these mischances, which did not offend her, since it was so like the harmless spite of a child that beats his racquet because it has sent his ball into the next garden, he seemed not to be thinking of her part in that loss at all.  It was his extreme sense of his own loss that was making him choke with tears.  It appeared that love was not always a shelter, a wing, a witty clemency, a tender alchemy.  She stood half asleep with shock until a sentence, said passionately in his delightful voice which made one see green water running swiftly, and at first refused admission to her mind by her incredulous love, confirmed itself by reiteration.  “Damn it all,” he was saying, “you were unique!” At that she cried out, “Oh, you are Peacey too!  I will go back to Richard,” and turned and stumbled up the wet hillside.

It is true that Harry’s desertion nearly killed her—­that there was a moment, as she breasted the hill-top and found herself facing the malevolent red house where they had always told her that he did not really love her, when she thought she was about to fall dead from excess of experience and would have chosen to die so, if Richard had not waited for her.  Yet it was also true that for long she hardly ever thought of Harry.  Such fierce and unimagined passions and perplexities now filled her, that the simple and normal emotions she felt for him became imperceptible, like tapers in strong sunlight.