There was no purpose in it at all, and it was unaware of him and
of his purposes. Gwenda's joy was pure and profound and sufficient to
itself. He gathered that it had been with her before he came and that
it would remain with her after he had gone.
He hated to think that she should know any joy that had not its
beginning and its end in him. It took her from him. As long as it
lasted he was faced with an incomprehensible and monstrous rivalry.
And as a man might leave a woman to his uninteresting rival in
the certainty that she will be bored and presently return to him,
Rowcliffe left Gwenda to the earth and moon. He sulked and was silent.
* * * * *
Then, suddenly, he made up his mind.
XXXI
It was one night in April. He had met her at the crossroads on Morfe
Green, and walked home with her by the edge of the moor. It had blown
hard all day, and now the wind had dropped, but it had left darkness
and commotion in the sky. The west was a solid mass of cloud that
drifted slowly in the wake of the departing storm, its hindmost part
shredded to mist before the path of the hidden moon.
For, mercifully, the moon was hidden. Rowcliffe knew his moment.
He meditated--the fraction of a second too long.
"I wonder----" he began.
Just then the rear of the cloud opened and cast out the moon, sheeted
in the white mist that she had torn from it.
And then, before he knew where he was, he was quarreling with Gwenda.
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