“Oh, you’re awake!” she commented brightly. “That’s good! Breakfast in half an hour. Get your things all ready to close the bags before you come down, won’t you.”

She disappeared.

It was no use. Nothing was any use any more. Doggedly Sabrina washed her face and brushed her hair and dressed herself, and laid her toilet things and nightgown away in the dressing-case, and went down to breakfast. Her head felt very hot and much too big, her hands were icy, and her knees wobbled. All her will-power was in her stoic silence throughout that awful meal, while she sat dry-eyed, choking down a cup of hot tea. It was no good behaving like a baby, making scenes. And she mustn’t look a fright with crying when she went up to tell Hilary good-by.

When Father and Aunt Effie rose from the breakfast table she rose too and climbed the two flights to Hilary’s room shakily, holding to the banisters all the way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

HILARY had been pondering the matter of self-exorcism, and arriving nowhere. At last he consulted the dictionary without much hope.

“Exorcise: to clear (a person or place) of evil spirits; to purify or set free from malignant influences,” he read. And as an example, a quotation from Lytton’s Harold:

“Muttering hymns, monks huddled together ... as if to exorcise the land of a demon.”

All this rather hurt his feelings and got him no further. Evil he was not, nor malignant. He objected to the word “demon.” Obviously, “exorcise” was the wrong term.

But the idea was growing on him that Sabrina, since she was making herself ill and unhappy, must be encouraged to get clear of the whole thing, including himself, if she could, at least for a time. He had decided not to attempt to interfere with her departure, nor influence her to continue her futile fight to be near him. This meant loneliness and readjustment of his days at Nuns Farthing, but he felt it would be best for her.