III + 

There was nothing harsh about this rain. It was gray and quiet as a benediction. The birds did not even cease to sing, and the west was already thinning to a moist and imminent gold. + 

The rector, bareheaded, walked slowly, unconscious of the rain and the dripping trees, beside his daughter-in-law across the lawn, houseward, and they mounted the steps together, passing beneath the dim and unwashed fanlight. Within the hall he stood while water ran down his face and dripped from his clothing in a series of small sounds. She took his arm and led him into the study and to his chair. He sat obediently and she took his handkerchief from the breast of his coat and wiped the rain from his temples and face. He submitted, fumbling for his pipe. + 

She watched him as he sprinkled tobacco liberally over the desktop, trying to fill the bowl, then she quietly took it from his hand. “Try this. It is much simpler,” she told him, taking a cigarette from her jacket pocket and putting it in his mouth. “You have never smoked one, have you?” + 

“Eh? Oh, thank you. Never too old to learn, eh?” + 

She lit it for him and then she quickly fetched a glass from the pantry. Kneeling beside the desk she drew out drawer after drawer until she found the bottle of whisky. He seemed to have forgotten her until she put the glass in his hand. + 

Then he looked up at her from a bottomless, grateful anguish and she sat suddenly on the arm of his chair, drawing his head against her breast. His untasted drink in one hand and his slowly burning cigarette lifting an unshaken plume of vapor from the other; and after a while the rain passed away and the dripping eaves but added to the freshened silence, measuring it, spacing it off; and the sun breaking through the west took a last look at the earth before going down. + 

“So you will not stay,” he said at last, repeating her unspoken decision. + 

“No,” she said, holding him. + 