If she would come!  In those last words she seemed to hear the appeal of a man’s agony.  What had he been through before he had brought himself to write those words?  They hurt her unutterably, piercing her to the soul, when she remembered her own half-hearted offer to return.  Yet she would have given all she had for a few days’ respite.  The hot fierce longing that beat in those few words frightened her by its intensity.  It made her think of one of those overwhelming veldt fires, consuming everything in its path, leaving behind it the blackness of desolation.  Yes, he wanted her now because she had been denied to him.  The flame of his desire had been fanned to a white heat.  She seemed to feel it reaching out to her, scorching her, even as she lay.  And she shrank with a desperate sense of impotence, feeling her fate to be sealed.  For she knew that she must go to him.  She must pass through the furnace anew.  She must endure her fate.  Afterwards—­it might be—­when it had burnt itself out, some spark of the Divine would be found kindled among the ashes to give her comfort.

And ever the thought of Guy waited at the back of her mind, Guy who had failed her so hopelessly, so repeatedly.  Was she going to fail him now?  Was she going to place herself so completely out of his reach that even if he called to her for help she would be powerless to stretch forth a hand to him?  The thought tormented her.  It was the one thing that she felt she could not face, the one point upon which she and Burke would be for ever at variance.  Ah no!  Whatever else she surrendered, she could not yield to him in this.  She could not, she would not, leave Guy to sink while there remained the smallest chance of saving him.

So she told herself, lying there alone, while the thunder rolled now near, now far, like a menacing monster wandering hither and thither in search of prey.  Earlier in the night she had tried to pray, but it had brought her no relief.  She had not really prayed since that terrible journey to Brennerstadt when she had poured out her whole soul in supplication and had met only failure.  She felt in a fashion cut off, forgotten in this land of strangers.  The very effort to bridge the gulf seemed but to emphasize her utter impotence.  She had come to that barren part of the way where even the most hopeful traveller sometimes feels that God has forgotten to be gracious.  She had never felt more alone in all her life, and it was a loneliness that frightened her.

Weirdly the lightning played about her bed.  She watched it with eyes that would not close.  She wondered if Burke were watching it also, and shivered with the thought of the morrow, asking herself for the first time why she had ever consented to marry him, why she had not rather shouldered her fate and gone back to her father.  She would have found work in England.  He would have helped her if she had only had the courage to return, the strength to be humble.  Her thoughts lingered tenderly about him.  They had been so much to each other once.  Did he ever regret her?  Did he ever wish her back?