He had not spoken to her at all since the night at Chitipur; he had no knowledge of the stupor and the prostration into which, after her years of misery, she had fallen; he had no insight into the one compelling passion which now had her, body and soul, in its grip.
He turned away from the door and went back to the Taj Mahal.

A steamer would be starting for Port Said in two days and by that steamer he would travel.

That Stella was in the house on the Khamballa Hill he did not doubt, but since she had no word or thought to spare for him he could not but turn his back and go.
Stella herself got up to dinner, and after it was over she told her friends of the longing which filled her soul.
"All through the trial," she said shyly, with the shrinking of those who reveal a very secret fancy and are afraid that it will be ridiculed, "in the heat of the court, in the close captivity of my cell, I was conscious of just one real unconquerable passion--to feel the wind blowing against my face upon the Sussex Downs.

Can you understand that?
Just to see the broad green hills with the white chalk hollows in their sides and the forests marching down to the valleys like the Roman soldiers from Chichester--oh! I was mad for the look and the smell and the sounds of them! It was all that I thought about.

I used to close my eyes in the dock and I was away in a second riding through Charlton Forest or over Farm Hill, or looking down to Slindon from Gumber Corner, and over its woods to the sea.