‘Now go, and be sure you have bedclothes enough before you drop asleep,’ she said; and Danvers directed her steps to gossip with Bartlett.

Diana wrapped herself in a dressing-gown Lady Dunstane had sent her, and sat by the fire, thinking of the powder of tattle stored in servants’ halls to explode beneath her:  and but for her choice of roads she might have been among strangers.  The liking of strangers best is a curious exemplification of innocence.

‘Yes, I was in a muse,’ she said, raising her head to Emma, whom she expected and sat armed to meet, unaccountably iron-nerved.  ’I was questioning whether I could be quite as blameless as I fancy, if I sit and shiver to be in England.  You will tell me I have taken the right road.  I doubt it.  But the road is taken, and here I am.  But any road that leads me to you is homeward, my darling!’ She tried to melt, determining to be at least open with her.

‘I have not praised you enough for coming,’ said Emma, when they had embraced again.

’Praise a little your “truest friend of women.”  Your letter gave the tug.  I might have resisted it.’

‘He came straight from heaven!  But, cruel Tony where is your love?’

’It is unequal to yours, dear, I see.  I could have wrestled with anything abstract and distant, from being certain.  But here I am.’

’But, my own dear girl, you never could have allowed this infamous charge to be undefended?’

’I think so.  I’ve an odd apathy as to my character; rather like death, when one dreams of flying the soul.  What does it matter?  I should have left the flies and wasps to worry a corpse.  And then-good-bye gentility!  I should have worked for my bread.  I had thoughts of America.  I fancy I can write; and Americans, one hears, are gentle to women.’

‘Ah, Tony! there’s the looking back.  And, of all women, you!’

’Or else, dear-well, perhaps once on foreign soil, in a different air, I might—­might have looked back, and seen my whole self, not shattered, as I feel it now, and come home again compassionate to the poor persecuted animal to defend her.  Perhaps that was what I was running away for.  I fled on the instinct, often a good thing to trust.’

‘I saw you at The Crossways.’

’I remembered I had the dread that you would, though I did not imagine you would reach me so swiftly.  My going there was an instinct, too.  I suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels.  Forgive me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the common human sum.  “Pariah” and “taboo” are words we borrow from barbarous tribes; they stick to me.’

‘My Tony, you look as bright as ever, and you speak despairingly.’

‘Call me enigma.  I am that to myself, Emmy.’

‘You are not quite yourself to your friend.’

’Since the blow I have been bewildered; I see nothing upright.  It came on me suddenly; stunned me.  A bolt out of a clear sky, as they say.  He spared me a scene:  There had been threats, and yet the sky was clear, or seemed.  When we have a man for arbiter, he is our sky.’