“I watched for you to tell you that this must not go on any longer.  I came to my mind when you were gone, Mr. Alexander—­I came to my mind!  I think that you are braw and noble, but in the way of loving, as love is between man and woman, I have none for you—­I have none for you!”

The sun appeared to dip, the fields to darken.  Pain came to Glenfernie, wildering and blinding.  He stood silent.

“I might have known before you went—­I might have known from that first meeting, in May, in the glen!  But I was a fool, and vague, and willing, I suppose, to put tip of tongue to a land of sweetness!  If, mistaken myself, I helped you to mistake, I am bitter sorry and I ask your forgiveness!  But the thing, Glenfernie, the thing stands!  It’s for us to part.”

He stared at her dumbly.  In every line of her, in every tone of her, there was finality.  He was tenacious of purpose, capable of long-sustained and patient effort, but he seemed to know that, for this life, purpose and effort here might as well be laid aside.  The knowledge wrapped him, quiet, gray, and utter.  He put his hands to his brow; he moved a few steps to and fro; he came to the wall and leaned against it.  It seemed to him that he regarded the clay-cold corpse of his life.

“O the world!” cried Elspeth.  “When we are little it seems so little!  If you suffer, I am sorry.”

“Present suffering may be faced if there’s light behind.”

“There’s not this light, Glenfernie....  O world! if there is some other light—­”

“And time will do naught for me, Elspeth?”

“No.  Time will do naught for you.  It is over!  And the day goes down and the world spins on.”

They stood apart, without speaking, under their hands the heaped stones of the wall.  The swallows skimmed; a tinkling of sheep-bells was heard; the stubble and the moor beyond the fields lay in gold, in sunken green and violet; the hilltops met the sky in a line long, clean, remote, and still.  Elspeth spoke.

“I am going now, back home.  Let’s say good-by here, each wishing the other some good in, or maybe out of, this carefu’ world!”

“You, also, are unhappy.  Why?”

“I am not!  Do I seem so?  I am sorry for unhappiness—­that is all!  Of course we grow older,” said Elspeth, “older and wiser.  But you nor no one must think that I am unhappy!  For I am not.”  She put out her hands to him.  “Let us say good-by!”

“Is it so?  Is it so?”

“Never make doubt of that!  I want you to see that it is clean snapped—­clean gone!”

She gave him her hands.  They lay in his grasp untrembling, filled with a gathered strength.  He wrung them, bowed his head upon them, let them go.  They fell at her sides; then she raised them, drew the scarf over her head and, holding it as before, turned and went away up the path between the yellow stubble and the wall.  She walked quickly, dark clad; she was gone like a bird into a wood, like a branch of autumn leaves when the sea fog rolls in.