had not sent the letters. The face of Isabel Perry had risen between her and the ardent page, and she had torn to scraps all she had written. …
In the afternoon she went out for a long walk alone. The day was clouding over. Mist hid the mountain-crags and trailed lower and lower into the valley. She walked up into the sombre pine-forest to a cascade that came plunging down in huge leaps from an invisible height. Beside the basin that received the final dash of the fall, in foam and roar, she sat for some time, the phrases of a letter to Basil shaping themselves in her mind. She was longing for him; a sudden piercing sense of loneliness made her weep. What did it matter after all that she was angry with him, that he had been unkind? Nothing mattered, except that they should not waste the days of their youth, apart from one another. It was far better to be together and quarrel.
Basil had been right—she should not have gone away from him. She should have answered his appeal. She had been wrong toward him in many ways. She had never of her own will sacrificed anything to their love—had given nothing but what she wanted to give. She had yielded too much to her grief that last year; she had not thought enough of Basil. What he had done was only what all men did. Men were cursed with a perpetual need of action. They
