He left her strengthened, uplifted, and consoled.

On Sunday morning she attended the service at All Souls.  In the afternoon she walked to the great flat cemetery of Scale, where Edith’s and Peggy’s graves lay side by side.  In the evening she went again to All Souls.

The church services were now the only link left between her soul and God.  She clung desperately to them, trying to recapture through these consecrated public methods the peace that should have been her most private personal possession.

For, all the time, now, she was depressed by a sense of separation from the Unseen.  She struggled for communion; she prostrated herself in surrender, and was flung back upon herself, an outcast from the spiritual world.  She was alone in that alien place of earth where everything had been taken from her.  She almost rebelled against the cruelty of the heavenly hand, that, having smitten her, withheld its healing.  She had still faith, but she had no joy nor comfort in her faith.  Therefore she occupied herself incessantly with works; appeasing, putting off the hours that waited for her as their prey.

It was at night that her desolation found her most helpless.  For then she thought of her dead child and of the husband whom she regarded as worse than dead.

She had one terrible consolation.  She had once doubted the justice of her attitude to him.  Now she was sure.  Her justification was complete.

She was sitting at work again early on Monday morning, in the drawing-room that overlooked the street.

About ten o’clock she heard a cab drive up to the door.

She thought it was Majendie come back again, and she was surprised when Kate came to her and told her that it was Mr. Hannay, and that he wished to speak to her at once.

Hannay was downstairs, in the study; standing with his back to the fireplace.  He did not come forward to meet her.  His rosy, sensual face was curiously set.  As she approached him, his loose lips moved and closed again in a firm fold.

He pressed her hand without speaking.  His heaviness and immobility alarmed her.

“What is it?” she asked.

Her heart was like a wild whirlpool that sucked back her voice and suffocated it.

“I’ve come with very bad news, Mrs. Majendie.”

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“Walter is ill—­very dangerously ill.”

“He is dead.”

The words seemed to come from her without grief, without any feeling.  She felt nothing but a dull, dragging pain under her left breast, as if the doors of her heart were closed and its chambers full to bursting.

“No.  He is not dead.”

Her heart beat again.

“He’s dying, then.”

“They don’t know.”

“Where is he?”

“At Scarby.”

“Scarby?  How much time have I?”

“There’s a train at ten-twenty.  Can you be ready in five—­seven minutes?”