Anne closed the window noiselessly to shut out the voices to which she had listened without her will, scarcely conscious of how they had reached her. She threw herself on her bed in the dark. After all, as Hugh said, it didn’t matter. But she cried all night as though it did.
In the journal which Miss Page held open on her knee, she saw the date of her return recorded.
“Came back to Fairholme Court, March 17th.”
She remembered her old friend’s greeting, as she went to find her in the morning-room, where she was lying on the sofa.
“Why, Anne! Sea air doesn’t suit you. You’ve got thin, my dear. You look quite ill. You mustn’t go away again.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I will never go away again.”
She remembered going into the library before she took off her walking things, looking round at the walls lined with books, and wondering why they had ever meant anything to her at all.
“Books are no good,” she said to herself, as she went upstairs.
“This also is vanity,” was what the words implied.