In the light of this dreadful theory so many things were explained⁠—little odd things which had puzzled her and been forgotten⁠—Stephen’s surprising anxiety when Michael was born (and Emily disappeared), and that evening in the summer, when they had all been so silent and awkward together, and the drifting apart of Stephen and John, and John’s extraordinary evidence, and Stephen’s present depression. It was all so terribly clear, and the incidents of the poem so terribly fitted in. Margery moaned helplessly to herself, “Oh, Stephen !” When he came in, she was almost sure.

It was curious that at first she thought nothing of Gelert’s illicit amours in the castle, the stealing of his own friend’s lady. That part of the poem, of course, was a piece of romantic imagination, with which she had no personal concern. But while she waited for Stephen, turning over the leaves once more, the thought did come to her, “If one part is true⁠—why not all?” But this thought she firmly thrust out. She was sure of him in that way, at any rate. She flung a cushion over the manuscript and waited.