All this it had survived, and now it was in good hands again, at peace, protected, dreaming in the sun, all passion spent, and still the holiest earth in Britain. And to it came Sabrina, embattled and afraid, but drawing up comfort and surcease through the soles of her small brogans. She found a low bank at the far end, and sat down there on her coat, her dressing-case beside her, and went on thinking about Hilary. And so, in the heart of a tragedy in stone so old as to be beautiful, she explored for the first time her most secret feelings about that dear, watching presence at Nuns Farthing.

Guardian angel, she had said once to Mrs. Pilton. But if he had lived, if he had come home as she had hoped, and found her there in the house—. He would have been thirty-three—old enough to know all about things, old enough to be depended on, young enough, perhaps, not to think her too much of a kid—. A tingling ran through her taut body. They would have been old friends when they met—well, at least on her side, and even without the strange intimacy of the last few weeks. Perhaps—. Slowly the glory spread. Already she loved him, blindly. Perhaps he would have loved her too. Perhaps they would have been married, and gone on living at Nuns Farthing forever after....

Sitting hunched up on the grassy bank, she hid her face in her arms, crossed on her bent knees, shaken and trembling with new knowledge. She belonged to Hilary. Something had happened to him out in India, but he had come back anyhow, to find her. The joy and pain of it were equal. She belonged to Hilary, and now she had lost him, and her life was over because she could never marry anyone else, and no one would ever understand that it was happiness for them both just to be in the house together. Nobody would ever let them alone. If she went back to Nuns Farthing, to Hilary, she would only be sent off to Switzerland. Whichever way she turned, there was no way clear to him now. And he was the man she was born to love....