They gave it up. They would never go near “the rotten thing” again.
Then, a few hours later, the thought of the freshly-receding tide began to work like madness in their veins, and they would be out and away.
It was easier for Rhoda; for she was of those who “sleep o’ nights”; easier until she found that her brother slipped off on moonlight nights while she slumbered: coming back at all hours, haggard and worn to fainting-point.
He stooped more than ever: his brow was more overhung, furrowed with horizontal lines. Sometimes, furious with herself for her sleepiness, Rhoda would awake, jump out of bed and run to the window in the fresh dawn, to see the boy dragging himself home, old as the ages, his hands hanging loose to his knees.
At last the breaking-point came. He was very ill: after a long convalescence, money was collected from numerous relations, family treasures were sold, and he was sent away to school.
He came back for his holidays a changed creature, talking of footer, then of cricket; of boys and masters; of school—school—school—nothing but school; blunt and practical.
But all this was at the front of him, deliberately displayed in the shop-windows.
At the back of him, buried out of sight, there was still the visionary rememberer. Rhoda, who loved him, realised this.
At first she did not dare to speak of the Forest. Then, trying to get at something of the old Hector, she pressed the point; pressed it and pressed it. It was she now who kept on with that eternal, “Don’t you remember?”
The worst of the whole thing was that he did not even pretend to forget. He did worse—he laughed. And in her own pain she now realised how often and how deeply she must have hurt him.