Then the postscript arrested her. She had not taken it in the night before. That humorous protest coming at the end of the rest of it astonished her. But he need have no fear, she told herself. She did not make the ghosts. They made themselves. And he had done the one thing that would keep him alive forever. She had a presentiment that henceforth all men who came into her life would have to stand or fall in comparison with him, that perhaps no man would ever again be seen by her for himself alone, but be merely a substitute. She might, indeed, remember him too well.
Then she saw that she was really thinking about going, that in spite of what he had said she was seeing the end of things as they had been. All the morning she walked about the garden unable to make a move. She looked about the beautiful old place, hearing the birds and the bees. Oh, no, she wasn’t going away from here. It was absurd. She began to think of his coming back to it alone. She could see him coming along the path from the boathouse steps, to the verandah, listening for her—no, no, she must not think of it. She had to go, at the back of her mind she knew that, even though she went on all day protesting against the idea of it. And she protested against it all through a second day, making no attempt to pack.
She read his letter every day, and every day it seemed to be a greater thing, more heroic, more uncannily right. But every day the fact that they could not go on together seemed more hopelessly stupid and wrong.
On the third day she was surprised to read in an Auckland paper an article by him written to calm the feelings of people wrought up by recent alarms. It was a moving piece of work. It called to mind the picture of courage and endurance that Captain Scott and his companions
