have drawn her mind more strongly, and it was because of her thought of
him that she preserved her steady look and strange eyes.

A strong woman, a woman with character, a woman who once she saw her
way, was able to follow it faithfully, wherever it twisted, wherever it
wound, and wherever it eventually brought her. No one could picture her
flinching or turning back along a road she had set out to follow; if it
had run in blood, she would have gone on in bare feet, not picking her
steps, and yet Hartley dreamed of apple orchards and an Eve in a white
muslin dress.




VII

FINDS THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH READING GEORGE HERBERT'S POEMS, AND LEAVES
HIM PLEDGED TO A POSSIBLY COMPROMISING SILENCE


The Reverend Francis Heath was sitting in his upstairs room, for of late
he had avoided the veranda. It was the leisure hour of the day, the slow
hour when the light wanes and it is too early to call for a lamp; the
hour when memory or fear can both be poignant in tropical climates.

The house was very still, Atkins had gone to the Club and the servants
had all returned to their own quarters. Outside, noises were many.
Birds, with ugly, tuneless notes that were not songs but cries, flitted
in the trees, and the rumble of traffic on the road came up in the
evening air, broken occasionally by the shrill persistence of an exhaust