When she had turned the handle and passed within, there was no more light. She closed the door without latching it, took out the little torch which she had slipped into the pocket of her coat, and switched it on. A narrow beam straggled into the darkness, showing chairs, tables, couches-shapes half guessed at in some uncharted place. She came to the pale curtains and slipped between the middle pair. The other two windows had cushioned seats behind the old brocade, but this one was a door, like the one in Scilla’s sitting-room which lay beyond. As she came out upon the terrace she switched off the torch. She would not need it again. Her feet had taken the way too often for that, by day, by dusk, and in the dark. And tonight it was not really dark at all-low clouds with the moon behind them and everything dimmed but visible.

She went to the end of the terrace and down the steps. A lawn sloped gently, edged with trees. Presently there was a path which went away to the left and wandered among them. There were shadows that came and went as a light breeze moved the branches overhead. The trees thinned away. Here the ground rose to a viewpoint where a great, greatgrandfather had set one of those formal summerhouses which the early Victorians called a gazebo. She climbed to it by a path which was overgrown with grass. As she came to the top, something moved in the shadowed doorway. She stood still, her heart knocking against her side.

There were two wooden steps up into the gazebo. Jason Leigh came down them and dropped his hands upon her shoulders. It was all so easy, so familiar, so near the pattern of what had been that she did not feel it strange. The months between were gone and the gap had closed. They were Jason and Valentine, and they were together. They stood like that without moving until he said,

“So you’ve come. Just as well. I meant what I said about coming up to beat on the front door if you didn’t. Well, now we’d better sit down and talk. The steps will do.”

He let go of her and they sat, as they had done so many times before. If the moon had been out, they would have seen the slope of the Tilling woods, the Green like an irregular triangle with its bordering of houses, and the trickle of the Till going down through the meadows to join the Lede. There were no lights in any of the houses, but the outline of the Green was visible and the black mass of the church. Nearer still a faint mist brooded above the lake where Doris Pell had drowned.

Neither of them spoke for a time. Valentine had come here to be angry, to beat herself against the thing in him that could love her and leave her, which could go away but could not stay away. But now that they were here together she could not do it. If he came he came, and if he went he went. There was nothing she could do about it. Only how could she marry Gilbert Earle when she felt as if she were married already to Jason? What was marriage? It wasn’t just the words which Tommy would say over her and Gilbert tomorrow. It wasn’t just the physical bond, the physical sharing. For some people it might be that, but not for her. She felt with a deep inner knowledge that she would never be Gilbert’s wife. And if they had never kissed, never touched, and were never to touch or kiss again, the bond that was between Jason and herself was something that would never change or break.

Out of the darkness at her side he said,

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know-”

He laughed.

“A bit eleventh-hour, isn’t it?”

He heard her take her breath.

“Why did you go away?”

There was a movement as if his shoulder had lifted and dropped again. The gesture came up out of the past, as dearly familiar as the tough lean body, the dark hair, the slant of his brows, the mobile mouth, the swift change of expression from grave to gay. He said,

“Needs must when the devil drives.”

“Jason, why did you go?”

“My darling sweet, there is only one answer to ‘Why?’ and that is ‘Because.’ ”

“Meaning you are not going to tell me?”

He nodded.

“Got it in one.”

She said in a low shaken voice,

“Why did you come back?”

“About time I did, wasn’t it?”

After a little she said, “No.” And then, “If you hadn’t come-”

“You would have married Gilbert and everything would have been all right?”

She took another of those long sighing breaths.

“No. There isn’t any way out.”

In her own mind she thought, “I’m in a trap. I can’t marry Gilbert. I can’t break it off. Not now. Not like this.”

The church clock began to strike. The twelve strokes fell upon the air with a mellow sound. Jason said,

“Well, darling, it is your wedding day. What does it feel like?”

She put the flat of her palm upon the step between them and pushed herself up. She felt as if the weight was too much for her to lift. But she was no sooner on her feet than he pulled her down again.

“No good running away from it, Val. You know you can’t marry him.”

Having pulled her down, he let go of her at once.

Her voice sounded lost as she said,

“I must.”‘

“You know perfectly well that you can’t! I’m not doing anything to influence you. I haven’t touched you, I haven’t kissed you, I’m not making any impassioned appeals. I’m just asking you what you expect to happen if you go through with this marriage. Who do you think is going to get anything out of it? If you’re thinking of Gilbert, I can imagine pleasanter things than finding yourself landed with a reluctant girl who is in love with somebody else. If you are thinking of me, I can assure you that I shall get anything you may suppose me to have deserved. And if you are thinking of yourself-well, I should recommend you to think again.”

She did not feel that she had anything to think with. She put her face down into her hands and leaned forward until they rested upon her knees. She had no thoughts, only feelings. In retrospect, the lonely ache when he was gone. Now and here, Jason so near that her least, slightest movement would bridge the space between them. In the future beyond these passing hours of darkness a nothingness, a blank in which she could conceive of neither thought nor action.

Time went by. He did not move or speak, but if they had been locked in one another’s arms, she could not have been more aware of him. In the end she lifted her face a little and said in a weeping voice,

“Why-did-you-go?”

He gave that half shrug again. This time it was followed by words.

“I had something to attend to.”

She went on as if he had not spoken, or as if she had not heard.

“You came to meet me here. You didn’t say that you were going away. You kissed me, and you went. You didn’t write. You didn’t come-” Her breath failed and the words with it.

He said, “It was tough for you. I always told you loving me was going to be tough.”

She got her breath again.

“People can’t just go away like that. And come back. And find that nothing has changed. If you are too unhappy you just can’t go on.”

He said without impatience,

“You knew I came, and went, and didn’t write.”

Again she went on as if she hadn’t heard him.

“I got a letter. Someone wrote it, but I don’t know who it was. It said there was a girl, and that was why you went.”

“I can’t tell you why I went. There wasn’t any girl.”

“There were three letters altogether. They were-nasty- as if slugs had crawled on them.”

“Anonymous letters are apt to be like that. You could have had more sense than to believe what they said.”

Her head came up.

“I didn’t! Jason, I didn’t! But the slime got on to everything.”

He said with something that wasn’t quite a laugh,

“Try yellow soap and a nailbrush!” Then, with an abrupt change of manner, “Val, wake up! You can either believe in me or not believe in me. Whichever you do, you’ve got to do it blind. Your anonymous letter writer didn’t produce any evidence, I take it. Well, I’m not producing any either. If you believe in me you believe in me, and that’s that. If you don’t believe in me, we make a clean cut here and now, and I wish you joy. As I remarked a little while ago, it is your wedding day. Or not, as the case may be.”