I knew perfectly what that meant. He wished to tell me what steps he
intended to take towards my divorce, and my heart trembled with the
thought of the answer I had to give him--that divorce for me, under any
circumstances, was quite impossible.
Sorry as I was for myself I was still more sorry for Martin. I felt
like a judge who had to pronounce sentence upon him--dooming his dearest
hopes to painful and instant death.
I could hear him on the lawn with Tommy the Mate, laughing like a boy
let loose from school, and when I went down to him he greeted me with a
cry of joy that was almost heart-breaking.
Our way to the glen was through a field of grass, where the dew was
thick, and, my boots being thin, Martin in his high spirits wished to
carry me across, and it was only with an effort that I prevented him
from doing so.
The glen itself when we reached it (it was called Glen Raa) was almost
cruelly beautiful that day, and remembering what I had to do in it I
thought I should never be able to get it out of my sight--with its
slumberous gloom like that of a vast cathedral, its thick arch of
overhanging boughs through which the morning sunlight was streaming
slantwards like the light through the windows of a clerestory, its
running water below, its rustling leaves above, and the chirping of its
birds on every side, making a sound that was like the chanting of a
choir in some far-off apse and the rumbling of their voices in the roof.
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