In the morning when he came early to her room, she was easier and able only to suffer her distress at losing him. Thoughts had come to her, helping her; and helping her the more in that they were of a part with the fatalism which had assured her at Audrey's death-bed that nothing could go wrong in her scheme. His resolve to go away was surely, she thought, fate's contribution to her success. Always she had planned for twenty-one—when he should be of age, and qualified himself to avenge his mother. Last night, in agony at losing him, she had nearly robbed herself of that. Fate, in guise of her panic realisation of his affection for Rollo, had interfered to stop her. Last night she had thought it insupportable to be left without him. While she lay sleepless—and heard her darling pacing his floor in the next room—fate had again encouraged her heart by showing her that this was well, not ill—that this was fate working for her; well that he should now, in the last period, be separated from Rollo.

Thus supported she was saved from the uttermost extremity of the collapse that came upon her when fondly he kissed her as she lay in bed, left her, returned to press her to him again.—"Think of it as a visit, Aunt Maggie, only that. Just a visit to give these idle whacking great hands something to do"—and then was gone.

One or two—up thus early—who saw him go by and came to Aunt Maggie when it was noised that he had gone away, told her how stern he looked—how strange. Miss Purdie, early in her garden, had noticed it. "Oh, Miss Oxford, if I had known! Oh, to think he was going when I saw him! Oh, and I suspected something was wrong. There was something in his face I had never seen there before. I thought to myself 'Now what is the matter with you, I wonder?' And I stood and looked after him, and dropped one of my garden gloves and never knew I had lost it until I was back in the house and found I had only one to take off. Oh, when I think of all his sweet ways and his handsome face...."

II

Stern he looked and strange, and stern his thoughts and difficult. His plans ran to coming up with Japhra on the Dorchester Road and joining him. Beyond?—he could supply nothing beyond. His urgent desire went to being away from home, and for his own respect and for his mind's ease working to earn his food. Beyond?—he could see nothing beyond. His thoughts and all his heart and all his being went to his Dora, to her exquisite beauty, to the rapture of their kiss, to the divine ecstasy of her whisper, "I shall always love you;" beyond?—black, black beyond, most utter black, most utter hopeless; emptiness most utter, mock most shrill, most sharp.

He laughed, poor boy; and "Fool! Fool!" cried, "abject fool!" He groaned, poor boy, and "Dora! Dora!" cried, "oh! Dora!" He set his teeth, poor boy, and braced his strength; threw up his chin and clenched a fist, and "Somehow! Somehow!" cried, "Somehow!"

Most to be pitied then, poor boy, as old friend wind, in whose path now he came, knew and mocked, or might have known and surely mocked—buffeting him with "Ha! Ha! Ha!" tossing his "Somehow! Somehow!" from his lips and chasing it and tearing it as old friend wind had heard resolves and mocked and tossed and chased and torn them from end to end along its course since mankind first resolving came.

But he was helped by that strong "Somehow!" as by resolve mankind—and youth the most of all—is ever helped. More stern, not less, it made him, but launched a shaft of light into the darkness of that Beyond—showing the adventure, not the desert there; inspiring him that somehow stuff was to be found there that somehow he would wrest to himself, somehow shape and beat to win him fulfilment of all his hopes.

Thus he was in brighter mood when presently he brought the white riband of the Dorchester road into view, in mood bright enough to laugh when, striking towards the spot where he proposed to pick up the van, he saw on a gate there a lank figure, bundle over shoulder, that suggested to him it could be no one but Egbert Hunt. He laughed—then had a tender look in his eyes, for his thoughts, as he made along in the direction of gate and figure, went to Rollo.

III