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'
Good. Then Dai Hughes and Evan can bring him down for an hour, they should be able to manage him between them on a chair. Will you organize it, Helen?'

'
He'll be thrilled.' Helen beamed her own pleasure. 'Haven't you told him yet?'

'
No, I thought you'd like to do that.' He rose from his seat on the wall and put an arm round her shoulders as they walked away. 'You've had all the unpleasant jobs to do so far, now you can have a pleasant one for a change.' He glanced sideways at her smiling face.

'
Have you heard from that nephew of mine lately?' he asked.

‘I owe him a letter,' Helen confessed. 'I'm really a very bad correspondent and I simply haven't got around to answering yet. Have you heard from him?'

'
Brief note of about ten lines,' the old man chuckled. 'But even then he found room to ask after you. You made a very deep impression there, you know, my dear.'

'I like Owen, he's very good to be with and he was very good taking me around as he did when he was here,' she said. 'I must make the effort and write to him again or he'll forget all about me.'

'
Most unlikely,' the old man told her, 'but I should write to him again. He'd like you to, I'm sure.'

‘I will,' she promised, stopping beside his old car at the front of the house. ‘And I'll go and break the good news to Emlyn, he'll be delighted.'

The doctor gave her a hug and kissed her on her cheek before climbing into the car. 'Goodbye, Helen, I'll see you tomorrow.'

She watched him go down the drive and waved as he turned on to the road at the bottom, then turned to go into the house.

Emlyn gazed at her unbelievingly for a moment when she broke the good news and then burst into laughter, throwing back his head and running his fingers through his hair, his eyes gleaming satisfaction. 'Back to civilization! I can hardly believe it, Helen, I'm back in civilization again.' She enjoyed his moment of triumph, but at the back of her mind was the thought that now, soon, he would have to know that she had no intention of marrying him. She would have to refuse him, finally and irrevocably, and she wondered if he would take the refusal with any worse grace than would Evan. Her only hope lay in the fact that now Emlyn was to see more people perhaps, have a wider scope than the one room, he would gradually see that there was no future for the two of them together. It was a hope that she fervently hoped would materialize.

She left him, still jubilant, to go and change for dinner, though she expected that it would again be a solitary meal as had been usual lately, but when she opened the door of the big room it was to find Evan standing in the window and he turned as she came in. He did not exactly smile, but neither did he appear to be quite so unsociable as he had of late. 'Hello, Helen.'

'
Hello,' she said, wondering how much she could safety add to the greeting without incurring his displeasure. 'You're quite a stranger,' she ventured.

'
Am I ?' He seemed to resent her remark as criticism and she sighed inwardly as having started wrongly. 'I've been rather busy, as I explained to you. I've no doubt Emlyn kept you fully occupied and I know you've been spending most of your free time with him, despite the fact that you know I disapprove.'

'
Not all my free time,' she denied. ‘I've been down to the village once or twice, and anyway I don't mind spending my time with him, so it doesn't really matter, does it?'

'
Apparently not,' he said stiffly, and changed the subject so abruptly that she had difficulty following him. 'I saw you and Doctor Neath talking in the garden earlier, and you seemed, to be very deep in some topic that engrossed you both.'

‘We were—just talking,' she said, deliberately evasive. However curious he might be, she thought, she had no intention of even letting him guess that he had been the main subject of their conversation.

'
I see.' He sounded sarcastic. ‘Secrets.'

‘No!' she protested, the more strongly because it was untrue. 'He did say that Emlyn could get up for a while tomorrow.'

'Well, that's good news.' For a moment he looked more affable until he remembered the apparent secrets she had shared with the old doctor. 'And the rest was too confidential to impart. I'm sorry I asked.'

'
You needn't be,' she told him, wishing with all her heart that he had left her to her solitary meal rather than started this conversation which promised to lead to a disagreement. 'If you want to know we were talking about Owen, his nephew.' This at least was partly true and helped to salve her conscience.

' It must have been very absorbing,' he commented, obviously unconvinced and she felt the old antagonism rise in her at his sarcasm. He had a discomfiting way of knowing when she was lying and at this moment she resented it and his cross-questioning.

‘It was,' she retorted. 'And the rest of the conversation was confidential as you said; what was said between Doctor Neath and me concerns only him and I.'

'Him and me.'

She glared at him for the correction, despairing of ever understanding him for more than two minutes together. It seemed to her that he had gone out of his way to be as unpleasant as possible, and after she had defended him when Doctor Neath had condemned him, too!

'Don't you dare correct me!' she objected. 'You have no right. You hide yourself away in a thoroughly anti-social exhibition and then you start lecturing me in English!'

His mouth hardened into the straight line she had come to recognize as the forerunner to losing his temper. 'I didn't lecture you in anything,' he declared. 'I merely corrected your grammar.'

'Well, don't,' she said crossly, now thoroughly out of humour herself and feeling surprisingly tearful. 'I object to being corrected as if I were a schoolchild, and you have no right to speak to me like that—I'm not a schoolgirl, I'm a grown woman in full possession of all my faculties, so keep your corrections to yourself!' She even surprised herself with her outburst and knew that he would find her behaviour unforgivable, but she was uncaring.

Helen faced him, bright-eyed with anger and waited for the fateful words that would end her days at Glyntarrach, half fearful, though she could not have said why. He looked at her for a moment without speaking.

'
I know you're a woman,' he told her at last, and the strong feel of his hands was on her arms, holding them firmly so that she could not move away even had she wanted to. 'What do you take me for, Helen, what kind of man do you think I am?' The hard pressure of his mouth covered any answer she might have made and she felt her head spinning for a few moments as it had on that high path above Glyneath. He was strong, stronger than Emlyn and not handicapped by weeks of illness, and she had no hope of freeing herself even though she beat at him for the first few seconds with her clenched fists.

He released her as suddenly as he had kissed her and she stood for a moment, too breathless to speak or move, except to run one finger over her lips, her eyes wide and unbelieving. He moved away from her to stand again in the window, his back to her, stiff and unfriendly again. 'I'm sorry,' he said at last without turning. 'I had no right to do that either.' When she did not reply he turned and looked at her.

‘Please don't apologize,' she said. ‘I'd rather you didn't, it makes it sound—' She spread her hands appealingly. For a moment the black eyes watched her, as inscrutable as ever.

‘I apologize for behaving so boorishly,' he said quietly, ‘but truthfully, I'm not sorry I kissed you.' For a moment his mouth showed a faint trace of that smile. 'At least I can no longer be surprised at Emlyn's behaviour or blame him, can I?'

Already she was ready to forgive him, indeed when she thought about it she had never really blamed him, or objected, but she could scarcely let him know that. 'Let's say no more about it,' she decreed. '

'
You'll stay and have dinner with me?' She nodded and he smiled properly this time. With Mrs Beeley in attendance during dinner it was only possible to keep the conversation on general lines, a fact for which Helen was grateful, for she found herself unusually nervous in his presence and waited only for the end of the meal before she started to make her customary excuses.

'
If you’ll—' she started to say, but he interrupted her without ceremony.

'
No, I won’t,' he told her quietly, and she caught her breath, seeing something in the depth of his eyes that could have been amusement.

'
I—I beg your pardon?’ She blinked, doubting her own ears and now she was sure that it was amusement that made his eyes gleam like that, it was an expression she had seen in Emlyn’s all too often.

‘You want to escape to your room or to the garden, am I not right? You want to run away as you always do, don’t you?' His gaze challenged her to deny it.

'I wouldn’t call it that,' she told him, wondering at his reason for stopping her.'

'
I would,’ he said, calmly contradictory. 'Sit down.’ He indicated the armchair opposite to his. 'Please,’ he added, 'I’d like to talk to you.’ She sat down obediently, her hands in her lap, not meeting his eyes and as if he realized how she felt he paused in the lighting of his pipe and looked across at her speculatively. 'If you’d prefer it, we can talk in the garden.’

Faced with the prospect of that daunting gaze in the glare of the electric light, she chose the lesser intimacy of the garden. 'I—I would rather,’ she said.

'
Then you'll need a wrap for your arms,’ he told her.

'
It gets cold at this time of year in the evening. I’ll wait here for you while you fetch one.' Once again, surprisingly, she obeyed without question and fetched a jacket from her room, hoping to avoid being heard by Emlyn and, inevitably, being called in. She was unsuccessful, and he called out to her as she returned.

'
Are you going out?' he asked wistfully when she put her head round the door, and she smiled.

'
Only into the garden for a while,' she told him. 'Is there anything you need before I go ?'

He ignored Dai Hughes' interested face across the playing cards and smiled at her.

'You,' he replied. 'I always need you.'

'
Well, at the moment I'm otherwise engaged,' she informed him with a smile. 'I won't be long. Enjoy your game.'

'
Where
are
you going?' he demanded in a manner so reminiscent of his father that she was forced to smile.

'
I told you, I'm going for a walk in the garden, that's all.' As if he suspected that there was something more that she was not telling him, he held her gaze.

‘Alone?'

She shook her head, wishing she need not feel quite so obviously nervous, especially with Dai Hughes watching her so speculatively; she could have sworn that he found the situation amusing and it did nothing for her self-confidence.

'
With your father,' she said, sighing deeply at the tedium of answering endless questions. ‘For heaven's sake, Emlyn!' She heard his murmur of protest as she closed the door and decided to ignore it for once. It was time she started to let Emlyn know that she was not the devoted slave he seemed to think she was. It was perhaps cruel to be so hard when he depended on her so much, but if the matter was not brought to a head soon it would be too late. She wondered, in the final reckoning, how much of his resentment would be echoed by his father and sighed in sympathy with her predicament.

Evan was waiting for her by the open door when she came down again and he raised enquiring eyebrows.

'
Emlyn called me in,' she explained, and he nodded as if he had already guessed what had delayed her.

It was a beautiful evening, typical of so many September evenings after a day that had been both fine and showery. The sun was almost gone, but there was still sufficient light to see quite well outside in the garden and the earth smelled sweet and fresh after the rain earlier. A slight breeze chilled the air slightly and stirred the trees into a soft rustling sound that betrayed the dryness of the leaves, almost ready to fall. The scent from the last of the roses still made the air sweet and the breeze wafted the perfume about them. It was quiet out here, as always, still and tranquil, and Helen felt the peace of it envelop her as it had done before. It would, she felt, be so much easier to talk to Evan out here away from the revealing glare of the electric light. Here she would feel less vulnerable, and able to conceal her feelings without being obliged to bear the disturbing scrutiny of those black eyes.

They walked the length of the garden before either of them spoke, pausing at last beside the dark beauty of the Ena Harkness that Dai Hughes was so proud of. Evan bent his head and lifted a bloom, heavy with rain, to his nose, inhaling the sweet scent of it. 'Are you going to marry Emlyn?' he asked abruptly and without preliminary.

She knew what she must say, but hesitated to make her answer as blunt as the question had been. Finding no alternative, she shook her head. 'No, I can't.'

'Can't?' he queried her choice of word inevitably, and she nodded.

'
I can't marry someone I don't love,' she said quietly, 'no matter what the circumstances. I thought you understood that.'

'
Perhaps I should have,' he admitted. 'I know that you told me earlier that you wouldn't marry him, but I wondered if things had changed, if you felt differently now.'

'
I don't,' she said.

'
And is love so essential to marriage in your opinion, Helen?'

She stared at him for a moment as if she doubted that she had heard him right.

'
I think so,' she said at last, slowly and added,

'
Don't you?' For a time she wondered if he found the question either unanswerable or whether he preferred not to answer, for he was silent for so long.