“Darling, I must go,” she said.
“Oh stay—Stay five minutes.”
He pressed her close. It lasted five minutes, and five more. Then he was running fast down the road to the station, while Harriott went along the field-path, slowly, struggling with her tears.
“He’ll be back in three months,” she said. “I can live through three months.”
But he never came back. There was something wrong with the engines of his ship, the Alexandra. Three weeks later she went down in the Mediterranean, and George with her.
Harriott said she didn’t care how soon she died now. She was quite sure it would be soon, because she couldn’t live without him.
Five years passed.
The two lines of beech trees stretched on and on, the whole length of the Park, a broad green drive between. When you came to the middle they branched off right and left in the form of a cross, and at the end of the right arm there was a white stucco pavilion with pillars and a three-cornered pediment like a Greek temple. At the end of the left arm, the west entrance to the Park, double gates and a side door.
Harriott, on her stone seat at the back of the pavilion, could see Stephen Philpotts the very minute he came through the side door.