enough to repay her trust.  Mastering his emotion, he went on:  “I reckon my packing and arrangements for leaving the country will take me all day at least.  I must see my bankers if nobody else.  I shan’t take leave of anybody, that would arouse suspicion.  I will be at the corner of your street with a cab at nine, and we’ll catch the ten o’clock express from Euston.  If we missed that, we should have to wait till midnight.  It will be dark; no one is likely to notice me.  I will get a dressing-case for you and anything else I can think of and add it to my luggage.”

“Very well,” she said simply.

They did not kiss; she gave him her hand, and, with a sudden inspiration, he slipped the ring he had brought the day before on her finger.  The tears came into her eyes as she saw what he had done.  They looked at each other through a mist, feeling bound beyond human intervention.

“Good-bye,” she faltered.

“Good-bye,” he said.  “At nine.”

“At nine,” she breathed.  And hurried off without looking behind.

It was a hard day, the minutes crawling reluctantly into the hours, the hours dragging themselves wearily on towards the night.  It was typical April weather—­squalls and sunshine in capricious succession.  When it drew towards dusk she put on her best clothes for the Festival, stuffing a few precious mementoes into her pockets and wearing her father’s portrait next to her lover’s at her breast.  She hung a travelling cloak and a hat on a peg near the hall-door ready to hand as she left the house.  Of little use was she in the kitchen that day, but her mother was tender to her as knowing her sorrow.  Time after time Hannah ascended to her bedroom to take a last look at the things she had grown so tired of—­the little iron bed, the wardrobe, the framed lithographs, the jug and basin with their floral designs.  All things seemed strangely dear now she was seeing them for the last time.  Hannah turned over everything—­even the little curling iron, and the cardboard box full of tags and rags of ribbon and chiffon and lace and crushed artificial flowers, and the fans with broken sticks and the stays with broken ribs, and the petticoats with dingy frills and the twelve-button ball gloves with dirty fingers, and the soiled pink wraps.  Some of her books, especially her school-prizes, she would have liked to take with her—­but that could not be.  She went over the rest of the house, too, from top to bottom.  It weakened her but she could not conquer the impulse of farewell, finally she wrote a letter to her parents and hid it under her looking-glass, knowing they would search her room for traces of her.  She looked curiously at herself as she did so; the color had not returned to her cheeks.  She knew she was pretty and always strove to look nice for the mere pleasure of the thing.  All her instincts were aesthetic.  Now she had the air of a saint wrought up to spiritual exaltation.  She was almost frightened by the vision.  She had seen her face frowning, weeping, overcast with gloom, never with an expression so fateful.  It seemed as if her resolution was writ large upon every feature for all to read.