_Your dog is at Godalming with my people. My sisters talk of
nothing else._
"Maurice rises like a phoenix from our ashes," said Guy grimly.
"He was always irrepressible," Michael agreed.
"And still you haven't answered my question about your monkery," Guy
persisted.
"You want action. I want contemplation. But don't think that I'm going
to take final vows to-morrow."
"And do you really believe in the Christian religion?" Guy asked
incredulously.
"Yes, I really do."
"What an extraordinary thing!"
Next day they parted, Michael going to the Benedictine house at Cava,
Guy pressing on toward Salerno. With every breath of the rosemary, with
every sough of the Aleppo pines, with every murmur of the blue
Tyrrhenian winking far below, more and more sharply did he realize that
what he had thought at the time was wonderful relief had been more truly
despair. Yet in a happier September might he not hope to come back this
way, setting his face toward England?
_One more turn of the head in the gathering gloom_
_To watch her figure in the lighted door:_
_One more wish that I never should turn again,_
_But watch her standing there for evermore._
_Pauline_
Pauline went away with Monica to spend the rest of August and the
beginning of September in the depths of the country, where however for
all the stillness of the ripe season she did not find very great peace.
In every lane, in every wood, below the brow of every hill she was
always half-expecting to meet Guy. It was not until Monica was going to
her sisterhood and that she came back to see TO LET staring from the
windows of Plashers Mead that Pauline was able at last to realize what
she had irrevocably done.
On the day after her return Pauline went to see Miss Verney. To her she
explained that the engagement was at an end.
"I heard something about it," said Miss Verney. "And feeling sure that
it was doubtless on account of money, I must very impertinently beg you
to accept this."
Pauline looked at the packet the old maid had thrust into her hand.
"Those are deeds," said Miss Verney importantly. "I have felt for some
time past that I do not really need all my money. My income, you know,
is very nearly L250 a year. L100 would be ample, and therefore I hope
_you_ will accept the surplus."
"My darling Miss Verney," said Pauline, "it could not be."
But the old maid was with very great difficulty persuaded of the
impossibility.
"And you mean to say," she gasped, "that you are never going to see each
other again?"
"Oh, sometimes," Pauline whispered, "sometimes I wonder if it could
really happen that Guy and I should never meet again. Please don't let's
talk about it. I shall come and see you often, but you mustn't ever talk
about Guy and me, will you?"
"I shall put this money aside," Miss Verney announced, "because I am
_most_ anxious to prove that L100 a year is ample for me. Extravagance
has always been my temptation!"
Later in the afternoon Pauline left her friend and went down Wychford
High Street toward home. There were great wine-dark dahlias in the
gardens, and the bell was sounding for Evensong. She knelt behind a
pillar, all of the congregation. How through this winter that was coming
she would love her father and mother. And if Guy ever came back ... if
Guy ever came back....
She heard her father's voice dying away with the close of the Office;
and presently they walked about the golden churchyard, arm-in-arm.
"I shouldn't be surprized to see Sternbergia Lutea this year," he
observed. "We have had a lot of sun."
"Have we?" Pauline sighed.
"Oh, yes, a great deal of sun."
Her father of course would never speak of that broken engagement, and
already she had made her mother promise never to speak of it again. Deep
to her inmost heart only these familiar vales and streams and green
meadows would speak of it for the rest of her life.