Not that she regretted even that, the breaking of her word, so sane was she. She could conceive that, if it had not been for Rodney Lanyon, she might have had the courage to have gone on. She might have considered that she was bound to save Harding, even at the price of her own sanity, since there was her word to Milly. But it might be questioned whether by holding on to him she would have kept it, whether she really could have saved him that way. She was no more than a vehicle, a crystal vessel for the inscrutable and secret power, and in destroying her utterly Harding would have destroyed himself. You could not transmit the Power through a broken crystal—why, not even through one that had a flaw.
There had been a flaw somewhere; so much was certain. And as she searched now for the flaw, with her luminous sanity, she found it in her fear. She knew, she had always known, the danger of taking fear and the thought of fear with her into that world where to think was to will, and to will was to create. But for the rest, she had tried to make herself clear as crystal. And what could she do more than give up Rodney?
As she set her face towards the village, she was sustained by a sacred ardour, a sacrificial exaltation. But as she turned homewards across the solitary fields, she realised the sadness, the desolation of the thing she had accomplished. He would not come. Her message would reach him two hours before the starting of the train he always came by.
Across the village she saw her white house shining, and the windows of his room (her study, which was always his room when he came); its lattices were flung open as if it welcomed him.
Something had happened there.
Her maid was standing by the garden gate looking for her. As she approached, the girl came over the field to meet her. She had an air of warning her, of preparing her for something.
It was Mrs. Powell, the maid said. She had come again; she was in there, waiting for Miss Agatha. She wouldn't go away; she had gone straight in. She was in an awful state. The maid thought it was something to do with Mr. Powell.
They had not gone, then.
"If I were you, Miss," the maid was saying, "I wouldn't see her."
"Of course I shall see her."