On that long-ago day on the cliffs near St. Renny, when he had played with the notion of running away to sea, he had known all along in his heart that that way was not for him.  When, to other natures, a struggle might have arisen between staying on at Cloom, carrying out his work there, and taking Blanche into the life she would have shared with him, the point had not even arisen for him.  During the turmoil of mind and body that the break with her had left to him his victory over himself had never really been in doubt.  When the passion in him had met, as he could now see it had, the same feeling in Phoebe and he had been swept into that disaster, release had not appeared to him even a possibility.  The new duties that had devolved on him since he had been free again all seemed to come quite naturally, without being sought by him, or even imagined until they floated into his horizon.  So now this new thing had come upon him, and, wiser than he had been when he loved Blanche, wiser than when he had married Phoebe, he saw it glamour-enwrapped, yet he recognised the glamour.  That he would marry Georgie if he could he was fairly certain, but that there was, as ever, the something in him which resented it, this mingling of himself with another human being, this passionate inroad on spaces which can otherwise be kept free even of self, he knew too.  Acute personal relationships with others makes for acute accentuation of self, and that was what, at the root of the matter, Ishmael always resented and feared.

CHAPTER XI

WAYS OF LOVE

A week later Boase said Evensong, as far as he was aware, to the usual emptiness, but when he went down the church afterwards to lock it up he saw a kneeling figure crouching in a dim corner.  He went closer and saw that it was Judith—­there was no mistaking that slim, graceful back and the heavy knot of dark hair.  Her shoulders were very still and she was making no sound, so it was a shock to Boase when, on his touching her, she glanced round and he saw her eyelids were red and swollen in the haggard pallor of her face.  She stared at him dully for a minute.

“What is it, my child?” asked Boase.

“I can’t tell you,” said Judith dully.  “You wouldn’t understand and you’d be shocked.”

Boase smiled as he sat down in the pew just in front of her.  She leant back against her seat and looked pitifully at his kind deeply-lined old face.

“Besides, I’m not sorry!” she went on; “at least, not the sorry that means to give it up, only the sorry that wishes I had never started....”

“Tell me about him, my child!” said Boase.  And Judy did.  It was the first time she had ever spoken of him—­what he was to her and what her life had been—­to anyone.  She made no wail beyond once saying, “I did not know it was possible that a person could make one suffer so....”