The sheets were very cold. She tried not to think of Roger's father lying in the grave she had never seen. The old, cruel longing was upon her for the sound of his voice and the sight of his face and the sweetness of his smile. She broke into painful weeping.
The hours wore past.
Of course he would marry Alwynne.... Alwynne would be happy ... there was comfort in that.... Roger would be kind to her.... A good boy ... a dear boy....
"And he might have been my son," cried out Elsbeth to the uncaring night.
CHAPTER XL
Roger never fought his battle-royal with Clare, for at the turn of Friar's Lane he met Alwynne herself, dragging wearily along the cobblestones, weighed down by paper parcels and the heavy folds of the waterproof hanging on her arm. Her hair was roughened by the wind that tugged and strained at her loosened hat; her face was drawn and shadowy; she had an air of exhaustion, of indefinable demoralisation that Roger recognised angrily. He had seen it in the first weeks of her visit to Dene. Her thoughts were evidently far away, and she would have passed him without a look if he had not stopped her. She started violently as he spoke—it was like rousing a nightmare-ridden sleeper—then her face grew radiant.
"Roger!" she cried, and beamed at him like a delighted child.
He possessed himself of her parcels and they walked on, Alwynne's questions and exclamations tumbling over each other. Roger at Utterbridge! Why had he come? How long was he staying? How were The Dears and how did Dene spare him? When had he arrived?