4/17 It gave Betty a sense of vast unused spaces, of Belle Plain clinging on the edge of an engulfing wilderness, of her own loneliness. The life she had been living had become suddenly impossible of continuance; that it had ever been possible was because of Charley; she knew this now as she had never known it before. In her one great grief, her mother's death, it had been Charley who had sustained and comforted her. She was conscious of a choking sense of gratitude as she recalled his patient tenderness at that time, the sympathy and understanding he had shown; it was something never to be forgotten. She wandered down to the terrace. |