Had Miss Ellen only known how inwardly active was the mind that outwardly seemed almost dormant! All yesterday the bells had been clashing from the little church in honor of Elsa's wedding. In fancy the girl had gone through the whole ceremony—had seen Claud attending his friend Percivale to church, in his capacity of best man. To-day it seemed as if the bells were still ringing, ringing on in her head until she felt dizzy and unnerved.
Why could she not expel unwelcome thoughts and order herself back to work, as heretofore? No use. She had taxed her self-control once too often, and stretched it too far. It had snapped. There was no power in her.
"There was a time," she thought, "when I could have saved myself. At the Miles' ball I was comparatively free—I could take an intelligent interest in other things. Why—oh, why was he sent there to force me to begin all over again?"
Lost in reverie, she wandered on until she found herself opposite the spot where Saul Parker had attacked Osmond.
There was a fallen tree lying on the grass at the other side of the lane, and, overcome with many memories, she sat down upon it. Here it was that she and Claud had exchanged their first flash of sympathy, when strolling back to Poole together in the summer twilight. Closing her eyes, she rested her brow on her two hands, as she lived again through the experiences of those days.
What was this strange weight which seemed to make her unable to rise, or to think, or to cast off her abiding depression? Had there really been a time when she, Wynifred, had possessed a mind stored with graceful fancies, and a pen to give them to the world?
That was over for ever now. Her literary career was stopped, she told herself in her despair; and when her money came to an end she must starve, for her capacity for work was gone. Yet all around her was the subtle air of spring, instinct with that vague, indescribable hope and desire which sometimes shakes our very being for five minutes or so, suddenly, on an April day, however prosaic and middle-aged we may be. She did not weep, her trouble was too dull, too chronic for tears.
She sat on, idly gazing at the farm-house windows and at the flight of the building rooks about the tall elms, till a footstep close beside her made her turn her head; and Claud Cranmer stood in the lane, not ten paces from her, his hat in his hand, his eyes fixed on her face.
For a moment his figure and the landscape surrounding it swam before her eyes, and then, in a flash, the woman's dignity and pride sprang up anew in her heart and she was ready to meet him. All the feeling, the force of being which, since her illness, had been in abeyance, started up full-grown in a moment at sight of him. She knew she was alive, for she knew that she suffered—as poignantly, as really as ever; and for the moment she almost hailed the pain with rapture, because it was a sign of life.
She must take his outstretched hand, she must control her voice to speak to him. She was childishly pleased to find that her strength rose with her need—that she could do both quite rationally. She did not rise from her log. As soon as Claud saw that she was conscious of his presence, he came up to her with hand extended, and, in another moment, hers was resting in his hungry clasp.