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If she knew of this she would tell me to go. It is because I feel for her as I do that I am capable of loving you as I do. I can love you and let you go. I can love you without even touching your hand again.

I have done, and would have gone on doing it. " He swung round to her now.

"That might be hard to believe but it's true."

"But ... but, Andrew, what's to be done? I can't go back there. At least' she lowered her head as she murmured " I hadn't thought I'd be called upon to. "

"Don't come back because of me. Whatever you do, don't do that. I can see you at times ... if you still want me to. I'll have to find fresh work, anyway, but that won't be difficult now they are crying out for farm-workers."

"Andrew." She reached up her arms to his shoulders and said, "Let me give you a farm."

With one step he had moved from her reach and the small space between them seemed to widen. Then with a motion of his hand as if he was flinging something away, he said, "No, not that. Never that. Don't you offer me

that. I am one who must make his own way, and as far as I can see that'll never be very high, but nevertheless I must make and pay me own way. Don't ask me to be another soft-seated parson. "

"Oh, Andrew!" The hurt in her voice brought him to her and he pulled her up into his arms and held her close as he said, "I didn't mean it like that. I just wanted you to know I want nothing from you but but yourself."

He was silent now, holding her hard against him, and as she felt the trembling of his body it came to her quite quietly, and therefore clearly, that whatever Andrew Maclntyre said his word would be her law.

Mentally they might be poles apart, for she did not know the trend of his mind as yet, but physically they were as one, and because of this, if nothing else, she would be capable of enduring anything to remain near him.

And so it was.

*> "Do you mean to say you are going back to that house to live with him all because that pigheaded Scot won't move from the village?"

"I've told you, Aunt Aggie, why he can't."

"Nonsense! His people could come and live near you, for that matter .

something could be arranged."

"His father is a bitter man, he won't leave the cottage He hates the sight of people and he rarely sees anyone up there," Aggie made a complete circle of her drawing-room before she spoke again.

"Well, it beats me. What if Donald starts changing his tactics and making demands on you, futile or otherwise?"

"Don't worry, he won't do that that's one thing I'm sure of. If I wasn't I don't think I could go back."

"And how long do you expect to live under that strain? You'll only be able to see Andrew Maclntyre when you sneak into that quarry. Don't be silly, girl, it would break you."

"Yes, yes, I agree with you it might, but nevertheless I must give it a try. Even if I don't speak to him, I know he'll be near and at hand if I want him. And it'll be a different kind of strain. I'll not break under this strain." She shook her head slowly from side to side.

"Oh, to think your life has come to this. And they made game of Charlie Wentworth and thought he wasn't good enough for you because he was only second clerk in Raynors' office." Aggie looked at her in dismay. "Well, when do you propose to go?"

"I'll go back this afternoon."

"My God!"

There was no-one in the house when Grace arrived. Mrs. Blenkinsop had gone home. The trolley was set for tea as was usual. The house was the same as when she had left it yesterday morning, yet not the same, and she knew it would never be the same again.

She was standing by the window of the drawing-room when Donald came up the drive. He stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of her, yet he did not enter the house through the french windows but went in through the front door and came into the drawing-room from the hall.

When she felt him standing behind her she gave a slight shudder, and when his hands came on her shoulders and turned her towards him she did not resist.

"Grace." His voice was low, soft and full of forgiveness.

"Are you feeling better?"

"I'm feeling all right."

"I'm glad to see you again. I've missed you; the house has been so empty."

She looked up into his face. His expression was gentle and beguiling, but no longer did she see any beauty in it. Had she ever loved this man? Had she ever been mad about him? Yes, yes. There was no use in denying that. And he could have turned the girlish love into a passion that would have burned fiercely down through the years. The thought, down through the years, brought another shudder to her body. Would she have to live in the same house with him until they were old, or one or other died? No, no, she couldn't. Something would have to be done, something would have to happen. But in the meantime she would stay.

She felt no sense of guilt at the thought of deceiving him. He had deceived her as no man should deceive a woman. His deception had amounted to torture, and he was all the more guilty because he set himself up as an example to other men. He who wasn't and could never be a man.

"Come and have some tea." He went to put his arm through hers, but she forestalled this by walking ahead of him towards the trolley. As she busied herself pouring out the tea, he went and stood with his back towards the empty grate, his hands linked behind him, and he talked, talked as if nothing had happened between them to shatter the harmony of his days. He talked about the shadow of war that hung over the country and the preparations the village was making to meet it, and as she listened she knew that the incident of yesterday morning and Ben would not be referred to again. As for what happened in their bedroom the other night, that was already something he had buried so deep that it could never be uncovered.

"Mr. Baker from the Stag has been very good. He has a small cellar attached to the main one. He's offered it for a shelter until we get things under way, that's if it becomes necessary, and we'll soon know that. Brookes says that food will be very scarce. He suggests we stock up; or, to be more correct' he gave a little laugh at this point

'it was Mrs. Brookes who suggested this. I was talking to the doctor.

He seemed to think he might be called up and seems worried over it, because of Renee, I suppose. Yet I should have thought at his age he would have been eager to go. He's just turned thirty."

She would have liked to have asked point blank, "Will you go?" He was thirty-nine. Men of that age could go. Oh, she wished. She turned her head sideways away from the thought that sprang into her mind. She mustn't desire that that was bad, vile, much more so than betraying him with another man.

When he came and sat beside her on the couch and took hold of her hand she drew it quietly away from him and, joining her fingers together, she pressed them for a moment between her knees before saying, "If I am to stay here, Donald, I want a room to myself."

She was staring ahead and did not see the reactions of her words on him, and it was some little time before he answered her, and then neither the tone of his voice nor his words surprised her, for he said evenly, "Very well, it will be as you wish."

He was relieved. She knew he was relieved, and for a moment she felt a fierce anger rise against him. He was a cheat, a hypocrite, he was also a coward. It might seem incongruous knowing her feelings towards him at the moment, but she would have felt less bitter against him had he made some protest against her request. And then he did, but in a way that deepened her scorn.

"There is only one favour I would ask of you, it will only be for a couple of days." He refrained, she noticed, from saying nights.

"I

heard from my uncle you know, Uncle Stephen; he would like to see me and proposes staying over the week-end. He is due in Edinburgh on Monday next and proposes coming here on the Saturday. " He rose now and went to the fireplace and took up his old position but with his back towards her, and from there he said, " He would think it unusual

.

you understand? "

Her anger almost burst from her now. It bubbled inside of her, and it was as much as she could do to remain still. Face must not be lost, his face; the proprieties must be kept up for the bishop. She wanted to turn on him and yell "You hypocrite!" and not only "You hypocrite!"

but to give it an adjective, an adjective brought from the memory of the years in the little house at the head of the coal yard and in spite of her anger its appearance in her mind shocked her slightly.

It was now the middle of October and Grace knew for a certainty that she was pregnant and she was both elated and slightly distraught. She knew that the child was Andrew's, and yet. The yet would loom quite large at times, for there would come back to her again and again the incident that occurred during the bishop's stay. She thought of it as an incident, an isolated, repulsive, even dirty incident. She also thought: Aunt Aggie was right again. Donald had made love to her.

Whether his intention had been to convince himself of his potency or to appease her she did not know; she only knew that she had been sickened and repulsed and she had been left wondering why she had longed with a burning longing for almost two years for this to happen.

Added to this was the frightening knowledge of the complete change in her feelings towards him. She would not have thought it possible for any human being to change so completely. If, two years ago, someone had confided in her, saying, "My husband is not capable of loving me', she knew she would have said, " Poor soul', and she would have been thinking, not of the woman, but of the man. She would have been sorry to the heart for the man, for, after all, she would have reasoned that sex was only part of marriage. You read that that was so. Moreover, hadn't Donald said so. But now she could curl her lip at that statement. Sex was marriage at the beginning, anyway. For the marriage to go right, that one thing had to be right. All things stemmed from

it harmony, peace, peace of mind and body, and, the most important thing of all, learning to like your man. And there was small chance of liking in the daylight a man whom you didn't like in the dark. There were extenuating circumstances, she knew, such as when a man was crippled, and a woman sublimated herself in a selfless love for him.

But Donald wasn't crippled . and yet, in a way, he was he had been born crippled. Realising this, she asked herself why she wasn't sorry for him, why she wasn't kind to him in her heart, and the answer came to her that it was because she knew him to be a cheat. He must have known his own makeup before he married her. He had felt the need of a mother to pet him, a doll to play with, and a woman to run his house and assist in his church, preferably one with a nice bit of money, but he had never wanted a wife.

There was one thing at least that the incident had achieved: it had given her an alibi. But at the present moment she didn't care if she had one or not, things were bound to come out.

She went into the kitchen now to see about dinner, and Mrs. Blenkinsop looked at her closely and exclaimed, "By, ma'am, you look pee ky And then she added with motherly concern, " You're not yourself these days at all, ma'am. Why don't you lie up for a while and have a good rest?

It's the aftermath, all that excitement about the war that never was.

Everybody's feeling it one way or another, the village is as flat as a pancake. It's funny, ma'am, but I could bet me bottom dollar that half of them's disappointed. "

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mrs. B."

"They are, ma'am. It would have given them the opportunity to carry on dizzy-lizzying all over the place, throwing their weight about."

Mrs. Blenkinsop mentioned no names but Grace knew she was referring to Kate Shawcross. Mrs.

B.

didn't like Kate Shawcross.

"About lunch, Mrs. B."

"Well, ma'am ... yes now, there's the rabbit Mr. Toole dropped in, or I can mince that chicken, what ever you like."

"I think we'll have the chicken."

"Just as you say, ma'am. Speaking of the Tooles' Mrs. Blenkinsop moved towards the sink, lifting in a stack of dishes as she spoke 'that Adelaide is getting her name up, I'm afraid."

"Yes?" Grace did not turn away from the prattle of her cook, it was only through Mrs. Blenkinsop that she knew of the real happenings in the village. People did not speak their minds to the parson's wife, and her nothing but a young girl after all.

"Well, since Andrew Maclntyre started at Tarrant's farm she's gone out of her way to be on the road nights when he's coming back. You would think she would take a hint, wouldn't you? Mr. Blenkinsop said it made his ears red when he heard her."

"Mr. Blenkinsop heard her?" Grace was looking at Mrs. Blenkinsop's profile, and the older woman went on washing the dishes, nodding down to the water as she said, "Yes. He was in the field just above the road, beyond the cemetery you know, ma'am, at the back there. He was going to drop down to the road when he heard them. She was accusing him of egging her on and he was denying it. And then you know what he said, ma'am?" She turned her eyes towards Grace.

"He said, " Have I ever as much as kissed you? " That's what Mr.

Blenkinsop said he said. I ask you. Then she snapped back at him, "

No, but you've wanted to. " Can you imagine it, ma'am? Her saying a thing like that to Andrew Maclntyre. Lowering, isn't it, for, after all, although they treated him a cut above the rest, he was only a farm-worker. Then he said, " It's all your imagination," and stamped off. But mind, as I said to Mr. Blenkinsop, he's a fool. She's the only child and it's a fine farm, one of the best around here, and it could be his just for the lift of his finger.

"Yes," I said to Mr. Blenkinsop, "that lad must be daft." "Perhaps he doesn't love her, Mrs. B."

Grace was turning away when Mrs. Blenkinsop laughed aloud.

"Oh, what's love to do with it? If he doesn't love her afore he'll love her after, and a good farm and plenty of dibs would help things along. Aye, it would that ... Love? Huh! And the chance to get into the county fringe. Not that the Parleys would take kindly to him, and some of the others likely wouldn't recognise him at first, but things are changing fast and time wears people down, and if there should come a war well, you know what changes wars make, ma'am."