'In some cases,' she said, and her voice sounded strained and hoarse to both of them, 'one cannot risk the old bond. One dare not trust one's self—or circumstance. The responsibility is too great; one can but follow the beaten path, cling to the one thread. But don't let us talk of it any more. We must make for that gate, Mr. Elsmere. It will bring us out on the road again close by home.'
He was quelled. Speech suddenly became impossible to him. He was struck again with that sense of a will firmer and more tenacious than his own, which had visited him in a slight passing way on the first evening they ever met, and now filled him with a kind of despair. As they pushed silently along the edge of the dripping meadow, he noticed with a pang that the stepping-stones lay just below them. The gleam of sun had died away, the aërial valley in the clouds had vanished, and a fresh storm of rain brought back the colour to Catherine's cheek. On their left hand was the roaring of the river, on their right they could already hear the wind moaning and tearing through the trees which sheltered Burwood. The nature which an hour ago had seemed to him so full of stimulus and exhilaration had taken to itself a note of gloom and mourning; for he was at the age when Nature is the mere docile responsive mirror of the spirit, when all her forces and powers are made for us, and are only there to play chorus to our story.
They reached the little lane leading to the gate of Burwood. She paused at the foot of it.
'You will come in and see my mother, Mr. Elsmere?'
Her look expressed a yearning she could not crush. 'Your pardon, your friendship,' it cried, with the usual futility of all good women under the circumstances. But as he met it for one passionate instant, he recognised fully that there was not a trace of yielding in it. At the bottom of the softness there was the iron of resolution.
'No, no; not now,' he said involuntarily: and she never forgot the painful struggle of the face; 'good-bye.' He touched her hand without another word, and was gone.
She toiled up to the gate with difficulty, the gray rain-washed road, the wall, the trees, swimming before her eyes.
In the hall she came across Agnes, who caught hold of her with a start.
'My dear Cathie! you have been walking yourself to death. You look like a ghost. Come and have some tea at once.'
And she dragged her into the drawing-room. Catherine submitted with all her usual outward calm, faintly smiling at her sister's onslaught. But she would not let Agnes put her down on the sofa. She stood with her hand on the back of a chair.