At the last moment when the meeting with Michael was really imminent Fay's insouciance began, as Magdalen feared it might, to show signs of collapse. It deserted her entirely as they drove up to Barford.
"Come out with me," she whispered in sudden panic, plucking at her sister's gown, when Wentworth asked her to go and speak to Michael for a few minutes in the garden. But Magdalen had drawn back gravely and resolutely, and had engaged Wentworth's attention, and Fay had been obliged to go alone across the lawn, in the direction of the deck chair.
Her step, lagging and irresolute, was hardly audible on the grass, but Michael heard it, recognised it. We never forget the footfall, however light, that has trodden on our heart.
The footfall stopped and he opened his eyes.
Fay was standing before him.
And so they met again at last, those two who had been lovers once. She looked long at the man she had broken. He was worn down to the last verge of exhaustion, barely more than a shadow in the suave sunshine. She would hardly have recognised him if it had not been for the tranquil steady eyes, and the grave smile. They were all that was left of him, of the Michael she had known. The rest was unfamiliar, repellant. And his hands! His hands were dreadful. Oh! if only she had known he was going to look like that she would never have come. Never, never! Fay experienced the same unspeakable horror and repugnance as if, walking in long, daisy-starred grass, she had suddenly stumbled against and nearly fallen over a dead body.
The colour ebbed out of her face and lips. She stood before him without a word, shrinking, transfixed.
He looked long at her, the woman for whom he had been content to suffer, that he might keep suffering from her. Fay's self torture, her protracted anguish, her coward misery, these were written as it were anew in her pallid face. They had been partially effaced during the heedless happiness of the last few weeks, but the sudden shock of Michael's presence drew in again afresh with a cruel pencil the haggard lines of remorse and despair.
He had not been able to shield her from pain after all.
"Oh, Fay!" he said below his breath. "How you have suffered."