"Edith," he said, relating the incident afterwards, "I thought she was coming round when she wanted to read to me. Why did she get up and go like that?"
"She went, dear goose, because she was afraid to stay."
"Why afraid?"
"Because she's fighting you, Wallie. It's all right if she's got to fight."
"Yes, but suppose she wins?"
"She can't win fighting—she's a woman. Her only chance is to run away."
That night Anne knelt by her bedside and hid her face and prayed for Walter; that he might be purified, so that she might love him without sin; that he and she might travel together on the divine way, and together be received into the heavenly places.
She had felt that night the stirring of natural affection. It had come back to her, a feeble, bruised, humiliated thing. She could not harbour it without spiritual justification.
She kept herself awake by saying: "I can't love him, I can't love him—unless God makes him fit for me to love."
Sleeping, she dreamed that she was in his arms.