I sat by her bed listening to her rambling. It was about Stirling, herself, myself. So she knew. She talked of the child who would play on the lawns of Whiteladies. That phrase which had haunted me! I would be there for she herself would be dead. It was the only way to make Stirling happy.

“It’s so hard to die,” she said.

“I have to die, though, because that’s the only way.”

Piece “by piece I fitted it together. And during that hour of delirium she showed me what was in her mind as she never would had her mind been clear. I was appalled and ashamed by the extent of her love for Stirling since she was ready to die for him.

A great determination came to me. I was going to nurse her back to health; I was going to make her live. Stirling must love her in time if I were not there. If we could grow away from this absurd obsession that we were meant for each other (for if it were true would we ever have allowed anything to stand in our way? ) he would learn to be happy with Minta. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the intoxicating passion which for a while I had known with Lynx, but it could be a good life; and Stirling would have the gratification of knowing that he had fulfilled his father’s wishes.

Within a week Minta began to improve. I spoke to her severely. I knew what she had done, I told her; and it must not occur again. It was cowardly to take one’s life.

“For others?” she asked.

“For any reason,” I replied firmly.

“Life is meant to be lived.”

She told me then how she had discovered that Stirling and I loved each other, for she had been secreted in the minstrels’ gallery. I tried to remember what we had said and I knew it must be damning.

“And you love Stirling,” she said.

“You were meant for each other. You are alike in so many ways. You are strong, adventurous people. “

“Who knows what love is?” I asked.

“It takes a lifetime to discover. I believe that love at its best is not the passion of a moment. It is something that one builds over the years. You can build it with Stirling.”

“But Stirling loves you. I heard him speak to you as he never did to me.”

“One day he will. Then he will have forgotten what I looked like.”

“It’s not true, Nora.”

“It is something you can prove to be true in time.”

I half convinced her. Her health was improving rapidly and the baby was getting stronger. I’ll never forget the first day she was able to hold him in her arms. I knew then that she had something to live for and so did she.

I knew, too, that it was time for me to leave.

I was going within the next three weeks. I had told Stirling that nothing would induce me to stay. He had his son; he had his wife; it was his duty to make up to Minta for all the anxiety he had caused her.

He realized this. He knew that Minta had suspected him of trying to kill her. That had shaken him considerably and made him feel tender and protective towards her. It was a beginning and I told him that in time he might become worthy of her.

Franklyn came to play a game of chess.

He said: “I’ve decided to go to Australia.”

“You! You’d hate it.”

“Why should I?”

“Because it’s not… England. It’s a new country. It’s vigorous, perhaps rough, and things are done differently over there from the way they are here.”

“Why shouldn’t I be different for a change?”

“Why are you going?”

He looked at me intently and said: “You know why.”

“Oh no,” I protested.

“You couldn’t. Not because of … me!”

“You are determined to go. It seems the only thing I can do is to come too. I can’t lose you, you know.”

“There is your estate. What about Wakefield Park?”

“I can put a manager in. That’s simple. In fact I’ve already settled that little detail.”

“But you love Wakefield Park.”

There is something I love more. “

I could not meet his eyes. I felt ashamed.

" Me, for instance? ” I asked.

“But of course.”

I stood on the deck of the Brandon Star and watched the shores of England recede. I was going back. Once I had stood on the deck of a ship bound for the same destination and Stirling had stood beside me.

Now Stirling was in England and I had said goodbye to him, to Minta, to the baby, to Whiteladies; and another man stood beside me.

Stirling and I were two of a kind. We had often said it. But Franklyn was with me now and Minta was with Stirling. We had despised them, mocked them because they were not like us.

No, I thought. They had a power to love which we lacked. Minta had been ready to die for Stirling; Franklyn had given up his beloved lands to come to me. What was love? Had Stirling and I understood love such as that?

“Very soon you’ll see the last of England,” said Franklyn.

“Does that make you sad?”

I turned to look at him, seeing him afresh.

“Not as I thought it would,” I admitted.

“We’re going to a great country, a land of endless opportunities.”

We smiled at each other; and the love I saw in his eyes was a glow that warmed me. I knew then that I wanted to learn more of his sort of love—and Minta’s—that love which does not look for sensation or continual excitement, the love that is built not on the shifting sands of violent passion but on the steady rock of deep and abiding affection.

As the land slid away below the horizon, I believed that I might find it.