It was on the thirtieth of July that Laura's father died. Three weeks
later Laura was living in the room in Adelphi Terrace which had been
Owen Prothero's. Nina had taken her away from the house in Camden Town,
where she had sat alone with her grief and remorse and the intolerable
memory of her fear. They said that her mind would give way if she were
left there.
And now, secretly and in a night, her trouble had passed from her. Lying
there in Owen's room, on his bed, held as in shelter by the walls that
had held him, there had come to her a strange and intimate sense of his
presence. More strangely and more intimately still, it assured her of
her father's presence and continuance, of it being as Owen had said. The
wind from the river passed over her, lying there. It fell like an aura
of immortality.
After that night the return of her bodily health was rapid, a matter of
three days; and they said of her that this marvellous recovery was due
to the old man's death, to her release from the tension.
Late one afternoon she was sitting by herself at Owen's window that
looked out to the sky. Outside the rain streamed in a grey mist to the
streets and the river. At the sound of it her heart lifted with a sudden
wildness and tremor. She started when Nina opened the door and came to
her, haggard and unsmiling.
Nina was telling her twice over to go down-stairs. There was somebody
there who had come to see her. When she asked who it was, Nina answered
curtly that she, Laura, knew.
Laura went down to Nina's room, the room that looked over the river.
Prothero stood by the window with his back to the light.
She gave a low sobbing cry of joy and fear, and stayed where she had
entered; and he strode forward and took her in his arms. He held her for
a long moment, bending to her, his lips pressed to hers, till she drew
back her face suddenly and looked at him.
"Do you know? Has Nina told you?"
"I knew three weeks ago."
"Did she wire?"
"Nobody wired."
"Why have you come, then?"
"_You_ sent for me."
"Oh no, no. It wasn't I. I couldn't. How could you think I would?"
"Why couldn't you?"
"It would have been," she said, "a dreadful thing to do."
"That dreadful thing is what you did. I heard you all night--the night
of the thirtieth; you were crying to me. And in the morning I saw you."
"You saw me?"
"I saw you in a little room that I've never seen you in. You were going
up and down in it, with your hands held out, like this, in front of you.
You were looking for something. And I knew that I had to come."
"And you came," she said, "just for that?"
"I came--just for that."
An hour later he was alone for a moment with Nina. She had come in with
her hat and jacket on.
"Do you mind," she said, "if I go out? I've _got_ to go."
There was nothing to be said. He knew the nature of her necessity, and
she knew that he knew. She stood confronting him and his knowledge with
a face that never flinched. His eyes protested, with that eternal
tenderness of his that had been her undoing. She steadied her voice
under it.
"I want you to know, Owen, that I sent for you."
"It was like your goodness."
She shrugged her thin shoulders. "There was nothing else," she said,
"that I could do."
That night, while Prothero and Laura sat together holding each other's
hands, Nina walked up and down outside on the Embankment, in the rain.
She had said that she was more like a man than a woman; and with her
stride that gave her garments recklessly to the rain, with her impetuous
poise, and hooded, hungry eyes, she had the look of some lean and
vehement adolescent, driven there by his youth.
The next day, very early, she went down into Wales, a virgin to her
mountains.
She had done all she could.