It was growing dusk now, but the Cottage was lit up.  Through the unshuttered windows I could see the light of a fire and the glow of a pink-shaded lamp in the room that used to be the drawing-room.  The opposite room was also fire-lit and lamp-lit.

The hall door stood wide open, and Sheila, my lover’s spaniel, stood wagging her tail in the doorway.

“Your cook is already installed, darling,” my lover said in the low voice which I feared in him “I told her to make herself scarce.  It was not likely we should want her at such a time.”

He took me in his arms and lifted me across the threshold.  The little house glowed warmly, and seemed to invite us to a home.  How holy, how beautiful, it would have been if the man by my side had been Anthony Cardew instead of Richard Dawson!  He still held me in his arms when he had set me down and pressed me to him.  I trembled with repulsion and he felt that I trembled, without understanding.  He let me go almost roughly.

“Did I frighten you?” he asked, roughly tender.  “You shivered, sweetheart.  Oh, to think that in three days more we shall come home here never to be parted any more!”

He was eager as a boy.  In the little drawing-room a tea-table was set and a silver kettle sang above a spirit-lamp.  Everything was ready for tea.  There were little silver-covered dishes with spirit-lamps burning under them, and even at such a moment I could not help noticing the beauty of the Worcester cups and saucers, with pansies and tulips and roses and forget-me-nots in tiny bunches on the white.

“Let us see the rest of the house while the kettle is boiling,” he said, and caught at my hand to make me go with him.  But I dreaded it, this visiting which ought to have been so tender and holy.  I said that I wanted some tea, that I was cold.

He put me in a deep chair and kneeling before me he chafed my hands, now and again stopping to kiss them.  I was grateful when the kettle suddenly hissed and he stood up and said that for this once he was going to make the tea.  So many days and years I should make it for him, sitting opposite to him and making the place where we were together Heaven by my face.

When it was ready he poured it out and brought it to me.  He fed me with little pieces of hot teacake and other dainties.  I took as long in drinking the tea as possible, but it could not last for ever, and finally he took the cup from me, put it down, and kneeling before me again he put his arms about me.

Something in my being there alone with him, in his growing excitement, suddenly frightened me out of my wits.  With a cry I pushed him away from me with both hands.

“Oh, don’t!” I said; “don’t you see I can’t bear it?  I hate it.  Let me go, please.”  And I struggled to be free of him.

He looked up at me with a dazed expression.

“But you are going to marry me in three days,” he said.  “I shall be your husband.  What was it you said?  That you hated my caresses?  You don’t mean it, Bawn?”