“You are a Job’s comforter,” cried Blanche, rustling out of the room.  She had heard the well-known click of the little gate, and she fled upstairs to be alone with her thoughts and her letter for a few moments before meeting Ishmael.  She no longer doubted she was going to break off her engagement and leave for home the next day, but she still had to decide on the type of Blanche who should appear to him and what her manner and aspect should be.  A tender grieving, shown in a pale face and quiet eyes, would probably be best ... and she could always introduce a maternal note in the very accent of her “dear boy....”

CHAPTER XV

BLOWN HUSKS

Not for nothing had Ishmael given way to the incursion of the personal, always before so jealously kept out of his life.  His desire for impersonality now only kept by him in a fierce wish to blot out his own as much as possible, to sink it in that of the beloved, to drown in hers.  He was obsessed by Blanche, she filled the world for him from rim to rim; and though with his mind he still admitted the absurdity of it, could even look at his own state dispassionately, he yet had to admit the fact.  It was some time since he had been near Boase, because, although the Parson never so much as hinted it, Ishmael knew he was not in sympathy with him over this.  Annie he felt he could hate for her antagonism, which, as long as it had been against himself alone, he had not minded; even Vassie would not yield altogether and come in on his side.  Blanche had to fight the lot of them, he told himself—­resentful, fearful lest they should frighten her away.  But at the bottom of it all was the fear, the distrust of her which he refused to recognise.

On this morning as he went down over the fields to Mrs. Penticost’s he was more uneasy than ever before—­he knew it was not his imagination that she had been different these last few days; he began to be beset by vague fears to which he had not dared give form even in his own mind, much less in any speech with her.  Yet since the dance he had faced the conclusion that they could not go on as they were, that Blanche must either agree to a wedding or a final parting....

He reached the cottage and had to wait awhile till Blanche, pale and grave, came to him in the little parlour.

“Come out,” he said to her.  “There’s a lot of things I want to say, and I can’t here.  The room’s too small.”

Blanche hesitated, seemed to be weighing something in her mind, and then agreed docilely; she put on a hat, and then went beside him towards the cliff.  As they went Ishmael tried to take her hand, trying to capture with it some of the spirit of joy which had fled, but she was carrying a little bag, which she snatched away; there came from it a crackle as of a letter....  They went down on to the cliff together and stood awhile in a speechless constraint among the withered bracken.