He had left
Normanstand and all belonging to it for ever, and was off to hide himself
in whatever part of the world would afford him the best opportunity. Life
was over! There was nothing to look forward to; nothing to look back at! The present was a living pain whose lightest element was despair. As,
however, he got further and further away, his practical mind began to
work; he thought over matters so as to arrange in his mind how best he
could dispose of his affairs, so to cause as little comment as might be,
and to save the possibility of worry or distress of any kind to Stephen. Even then, in his agony of mind, his heart was with her; it was not the
least among his troubles that he would have to be away from her when
perhaps she would need him most. And yet whenever he would come to this
point in his endless chain of thought, he would have to stop for a while,
overcome with such pain that his power of thinking was paralysed. He
would never, could never, be of service to her again. He had gone out of
her life, as she had gone out of his life; though she never had, nor
never could out of his thoughts. It was all over! All the years of
sweetness, of hope, and trust, and satisfied and justified faith in each
other, had been wiped out by that last terrible, cruel meeting. Oh! how
could she have said such things to him! How could she have thought them! And there she was now in all the agony of her unrestrained passion. Well
he knew, from his long experience of her nature, how she must have
suffered to be in such a state of mind, to have so forgotten all the
restraint of her teaching and her life! Poor, poor Stephen! Fatherless
now as well as motherless; and friendless as well as fatherless! No one
to calm her in the height of her wild abnormal passion! No one to
comfort her when the fit had passed! No one to sympathise with her for
all that she had suffered! No one to help her to build new and better
hopes out of the wreck of her mad ideas! He would cheerfully have given
his life for her. Only last night he was prepared to kill, which was
worse than to die, for her sake. And now to be far away, unable to help,
unable even to know how she fared. And behind her eternally the shadow
of that worthless man who had spurned her love and flouted her to a
chance comer in his drunken delirium. It was too bitter to bear. How
could God lightly lay such a burden on his shoulders who had all his life
tried to walk in sobriety and chastity and in all worthy and manly ways! It was unfair! It was unfair! If he could do anything for her? Anything! Anything! . . . And so the unending whirl of thoughts went on! The smoke of London was dim on the horizon when he began to get back to
practical matters. When the train drew up at Euston he stepped from it
as one to whom death would be a joyous relief! He went to a quiet hotel, and from there transacted by letter such
business matters as were necessary to save pain and trouble to others. As
for himself, he made up his mind that he would go to Alaska, which he
took to be one of the best places in the as yet uncivilised world for a
man to lose his identity. As a security at the start he changed his
name; and as John Robinson, which was not a name to attract public
attention, he shipped as a passenger on the _Scoriac_ from London to New
York. The _Scoriac_ was one of the great cargo boats which take a certain
number of passengers. The few necessaries which he took with him were
chosen with an eye to utility in that frozen land which he sought. For
the rest, he knew nothing, nor did he care how or whither he went. His
vague purpose was to cross the American Continent to San Francisco, and
there to take passage for the high latitudes north of the Yukon River. * * * * *

When Stephen began to regain consciousness her first sensation was one of
numbness. She was cold in the back, and her feet did not seem to exist;
but her head was hot and pulsating as though her brain were a living
thing. Then her half-open eyes began to take in her surroundings. For
another long spell she began to wonder why all around her was green. Then
came the inevitable process of reason. Trees! It is a wood! How did I
come here? why am I lying on the ground? All at once wakened memory opened on her its flood-gates, and overwhelmed
her with pain. With her hands pressed to her throbbing temples and her
burning face close to the ground, she began to recall what she could of
the immediate past. It all seemed like a terrible dream. By degrees her
intelligence came back to its normal strength, and all at once, as does
one suddenly wakened from sleep to the knowledge of danger, she sat up. Somehow the sense of time elapsed made Stephen look at her watch. It was
half-past twelve. As she had come into the grove immediately after
breakfast, and as Harold had almost immediately joined her, and as the
interview between them had been but short, she must have lain on the
ground for more than three hours. She rose at once, trembling in every
limb. A new fear began to assail her; that she had been missed at home,
and that some one might have come to look for her. Up to now she had not
been able to feel the full measure of pain regarding what had passed, but
which would, she knew, come to her in the end. It was too vague as yet;
she could not realise that it had really been. But the fear of discovery
was immediate, and must be guarded against without delay. As well as she
could, she tidied herself and began to walk slowly back to the house,
hoping to gain her own room unnoticed. That her general intelligence was
awake was shown by the fact that before she left the grove she remembered
that she had forgotten her sunshade. She went back and searched till she
had found it. Gaining her room without meeting any one, she at once change her dress,
fearing that some soil or wrinkle might betray her. Resolutely she put
back from her mind all consideration of the past; there would be time for
that later on. Her nerves were already much quieter than they had been. That long faint, or lapse into insensibility, had for the time taken the
place of sleep. There would be a price to be paid for it later; but for
the present it had served its purpose. Now and again she was disturbed
by one thought; she could not quite remember what had occurred after
Harold had left, and just before she became unconscious. She dared not
dwell upon it, however. It would doubtless all come back to her when she
had leisure to think the whole matter over as a connected narrative. When the gong sounded for lunch she went down, with a calm exterior, to
face the dreaded ordeal of another meal. Luncheon passed off without a hitch. She and her aunt talked as usual
over all the small affairs of the house and the neighbourhood, and the
calm restraint was in itself soothing. Even then she could not help
feeling how much convention is to a woman's life.