Mavis sank helplessly on her bed:  she felt as if her heart had been struck a merciless blow.  She was a little consoled by Perigal’s letter, but, in her heart of hearts, something told her that, despite his brave words, the marriage was indefinitely postponed; indeed, it was more than doubtful if it would ever take place at all.  She suffered, dumbly, despairingly; her torments were the more poignant because she realised that the man she loved beyond anything in the world must be acutely distressed at this unexpected confounding of his hopes.  Her head throbbed with dull pains which gradually increased in intensity; these, at last, became so violent that she wondered if it were going to burst.  She felt the need of action, of doing anything that might momentarily ease her mind of the torments afflicting it.  Her wedding frock attracted her attention.  Mavis, with a lump in her throat, took off and folded this, and put it out of sight in a trunk; then, with red eyes and face the colour of lead, she flung on her work-a-day clothes, to walk mechanically to the office.  The whole day she tried to come to terms with the calamity that had so suddenly befallen her; a heavy, persistent pressure on the top of her head mercifully dulled her perceptions; but at the back of her mind a resolution was momentarily gaining strength—­a resolution that was to the effect that it was her duty to the man she loved to insist upon his falling in with his father’s wishes.  It gave her a certain dim pleasure to think that her suffering meant that, some day, Perigal would be grateful to her for her abnegation of self.

Perigal, looking middle-aged and careworn, was impatiently awaiting her arrival by the river.  Her heart ached to see his altered appearance.

“My Mavis!” he cried, as he took her hand.

She tried to speak, but a little sob caught in her throat.  They walked for some moments in silence.

“I told him all about it; I thought it better,” said Perigal presently.  “But I never thought he’d cut up rough.”

“Is there any chance of his changing his mind?”

“Not the remotest.  If he once gets a thing into his head, as he has this, nothing on earth will move him.”

“I won’t let it make any difference to you,” she declared.

“What do you mean?” he asked quickly.

“That nothing, nothing will persuade me to marry you on Thursday.”

“What?”

“I mean it.  I have made up my mind.”

“But I’ve set my mind on it, darling.”

“I’m doing it for your good.”

He argued, threatened, cajoled, pleaded for the best part of two hours, but nothing would shake her resolution.  To all of his arguments, she would reply in a tone admitting no doubt of the unalterable nature of her determination: 

“I’m doing it for your good, beloved.”

Shadows grew apace; light clouds laced the west; a hush was in the air, as if trees, bushes, and flowers were listening intently for a message which had evaded them all the day.