Mr. Pendyce sat there long with his horse and with his dog, and from out the blackness of the spaniel John, who was more than less asleep, there shone at times an eye turned on his master like some devoted star.  The sun, shining too, gilded the stem of the birch-tree.  The birds and beasts began their evening stir all through the undergrowth, and rabbits, popping out into the ride, looked with surprise at the spaniel John, and popped in back again.  They knew that men with horses had no guns, but could not bring themselves to trust that black and hairy thing whose nose so twitched whenever they appeared.  The gnats came out to dance, and at their dancing, every sound and scent and shape became the sounds and scents and shapes of evening; and there was evening in the Squire’s heart.

Slowly and stiffly he got up from the log and mounted to ride home.  It would be just as lonely when he got there, but a house is better than a wood, where the gnats dance, the birds and creatures stir and stir, and shadows lengthen; where the sun steals upwards on the tree-stems, and all is careless of its owner, Man.

It was past seven o’clock when he went to his study.  There was a lady standing at the window, and Mr. Pendyce said: 

“I beg your pardon?”

The lady turned; it was his wife.  The Squire stopped with a hoarse sound, and stood silent, covering his eyes with his hand.

CHAPTER VIII

Acute attack of ‘Pendycitis’

Mrs. Pendyce felt very faint when she hurried away from Chelsea.  She had passed through hours of great emotion, and eaten nothing.

Like sunset clouds or the colours in mother-o’-pearl, so, it is written, shall be the moods of men—­interwoven as the threads of an embroidery, less certain than an April day, yet with a rhythm of their own that never fails, and no one can quite scan.

A single cup of tea on her way home, and her spirit revived.  It seemed suddenly as if there had been a great ado about nothing!  As if someone had known how stupid men could be, and been playing a fantasia on that stupidity.  But this gaiety of spirit soon died away, confronted by the problem of what she should do next.

She reached her hotel without making a decision.  She sat down in the reading-room to write to Gregory, and while she sat there with her pen in her hand a dreadful temptation came over her to say bitter things to him, because by not seeing people as they were he had brought all this upon them.  But she had so little practice in saying bitter things that she could not think of any that were nice enough, and in the end she was obliged to leave them out.  After finishing and sending off the note she felt better.  And it came to her suddenly that, if she packed at once, there was just time to catch the 5.55 to Worsted Skeynes.

As in leaving her home, so in returning, she followed her instinct, and her instinct told her to avoid unnecessary fuss and suffering.