She would never be able to get to Ellen if she could not face the sea, and she knew now that she could not face it. There was no deliverance, after all. All that she could do was to sit and wait for Ellen to come, and Ellen might never come.... She sprang to her feet, crying aloud that she was trapped, as Kirkby, down in the garden, was crying that he was trapped. She could neither go nor stay, she said to herself, get to Ellen nor remain here. Life, after all these years of bitterness and despair, could do nothing better for her than to get her into this trap....
With the supreme terror upon her of those who see themselves caught by life she ran to the door, and beheld the bowed figure of Kirkby, dusky and ghost-like in the distance. Leaving the house, as if it was her own self that she left, she went running and stumbling towards him across the gardens.
PART III
THEIRS
I
HE came hurriedly to meet her, forgetting himself and his personal misery in this sudden alarm. “What’s to do, Mattie? What’s wrong?” he enquired anxiously, as they drew near to each other in the shadows.
She stumbled the last few yards, and clung to his arm. He could feel her shaking. Even in the dusk he could see the marks of tears upon her face.
“What’s to do?” he said again.
She made an effort to control herself then, and heard her voice come out as if from some other person.
“We can’t go,” she said, and her voice broke. “It’s no use! We can’t go.”
He felt, as it were, a sudden lightening of the atmosphere about them; as if the sun, already gone some time, had for the moment broken out afresh.... But he was too tired to feel more; too tired, certainly, to feel glad. Indeed, he was conscious, rather, of a faint resentment that the problem which had cost so much to settle should be about to be reopened.