“I must go now,” he thought. “I must go now.” And he began to suspect that what really held him back from making a start upon his walk was not any attraction in the Smith ménage, but simply the great invisible struggle that had already begun between that dead man in the cemetery and this woman who was so extraordinarily alive!

She had come prepared to avenge herself in her own magnificent way⁠—not basely, but still with formidable success. She had not come to Ramsgard to efface herself. And now, being here, being encamped, as Miss Gault said, on the very edge of his burying-ground, she could not refrain, just out of pure, suppressed high spirits, from stirring up the mud of the ambiguous past. Well! The event must work itself out. In no sense was he responsible.⁠ ⁠…