He was nonplussed and bewildered by her behaviour, but he was, as she had known he would he, utterly convinced of the sincerity of her acting. He moved slowly towards the door. As he reached it, he looked back. She could not help but look at him. There was consideration and a strange gallantry in his face.

‘You are quite – sure, Violet?’ he asked.

‘Sure?’ she questioned. ‘That I am going back to Eric? But of course I am sure. Can you imagine Eric bringing up two children without me being there to see to everything?’

She turned to her letter.

She heard the door of the sitting room close.

She heard Robert’s feet crossing the hall, she heard him shut the front door and walk down the garden steps. She sat very still, listening for a long time after there was no sound save the slow methodical ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

Then slowly, very slowly she lowered her head onto her arms. The tears did not come for a long time, but when they did, they shook her from head to foot, a tempest of utter misery such as she had never experienced in the whole of her life before. And she knew then that she was weeping not only for Robert but her lost youth.

Robert walked away into the warm night with what seemed a paean of thankfulness in his heart. It was only now in the utter relief that Violet’s decision had brought him that he realised how terribly afraid he had been of telling her that their love affair was at an end.

He had known, though he had not dared voice it to himself, that if she appealed to him to save her good name, if she asked him to behave honourably towards her, he must do so, whatever the cost to himself.

But now he was safe! Safe and free to return to Cheveron. He felt as if he had come through some desperate battle by a hair’s breadth. Even now he was not certain how near he had been to defeat or annihilation. He was free, that was all that mattered, free, he thought as he watched the flowers turning their faces towards the morning sun, to ask Mistral to marry him.

He sat so long in the window that when he glanced at the clock he started hastily to his feet and was forced to bathe and change his clothes in almost record time. Even so, when he arrived at the Chapel of St. Dévote, the service was nearly finished. He had meant to get there earlier, but he had sat watching the dawn for too long. He guessed that today of all days, even though she might be feeling the ill effects of what had happened last night, Mistral would go to Early Mass.

He pushed open the baize-covered door of the Chapel.