He crossed the rutted lane and leaned on the wall. Here was the solving of his problem ready to his hand as he had foretold, but now he was rebellious. He stared across the field to where the birches stood about his pool, and he saw the brilliance of his future sadden and fade as though a star had drowned itself there, in the water among the trees. He made a movement as if to follow and bring it back, yet he stayed by the wall: his hands gripped the stones, but his heart had gone after the glowing treasure, lost and sunken, and as yet he had no wish to kindle the little rushlight of his faith, blown out by his own gasping breath.
He faced the blackness and turned to Janet. "I'm staying," he said. He had made his decision, but, as though he looked at himself from afar off, he saw all the pitiful struggling of his youth and felt its loneliness, and his mind swung forward to the years when he should have ceased to suffer from the unbearable throb of his own being. And though he was no easy smiler, his mouth widened. Life and his conception of it were things too mysterious for anger, or sorrow, or speculation, and for an instant he was glad to think himself splendidly delivered from free will. But that thought passed swiftly, and he became proud in the possession of those qualities that make life difficult.
"Janet," he said, and the smile lingered, "you've played me false. Here I've been thinking you'd save us from the toils; I've been thinking you were a witch, and I find you're nothing but a common woman after all!"
She had no merriment to give back.
"I've been delivered out of temptation, so far," she said, "but I may fall yet. How often do you think I've said the Lord's Prayer when I've known that poor soul was bleating all over the mountains like a lost sheep, and your mother after him with the lantern in her hand? 'Deliver us from temptation, deliver me from temptation,' I've said over and over, to keep back the thoughts. I could say charms over him. I brought him to my door once—only once—when I knew the drink was crying out in him; but not again. It wasn't a face that I was meant to see, the one he showed me that night, so now I say my prayers. I'll do no more, Alexander."
He drew near. "Ah, but if I wanted you to, Janet? If I needed help?"
"Ah, then." She brushed a hand across her face. "Pray that the day won't come," she said.
[CHAPTER XV]
He remembered how he took Janet home through the soft darkness, and returned to find his father and mother in the kitchen. She was kneeling at her husband's feet, and though she turned and smiled, she did not speak. The light of the single candle showed her white face patched with shadow; her clothes were disordered, her hair fell in wisps on each side of her face.