The manner in which Dr. Callandar spent that tragic Sunday is not clearly on record. We have watched Esther so closely that he has been permitted to escape our observation, and it would be manifestly unfair to expect any coherent account of the day from him. He knows that he went for a walk, early, and that he walked all day. He remembers once resting by the willow-fringed pool which had seen his introduction into Coombe, but he could not stay there. Between him and that hot June day lay the wreck of a world. Once he stumbled upon the Pine Lake road and followed it a little way. But here, too, memory came too close and drove him aside into the fields. There he tried to face his future fairly, under the calm sky. But it was hard work. With such a riot of feeling, it was difficult to think. His mind continually fell away into the contemplation of his own misery. It was a bad day, a day which left an ineffaceable mark.
With night came the first sign of peace, or rather of capitulation. He fought no more because he realised that there was nothing for which to fight. There had never been, from the very first moment, a possibility of escape, the smallest ray of hope. Fate had met him squarely and the issue had never been in doubt.
It was a "wonderful clear night of stars" when, having circled the town in his aimless wandering, he found himself opposite the schoolhouse gate and calm enough to allow his thoughts to dwell definitely upon Esther. She, at least, was safe, and the knowledge brought pure thankfulness. Not for anything in the world would he have had her entangled in this tragic coil. Leaning over the gate he saw the school steps, faintly white in the starlight. It needed small effort of imagination to see her there as he had seen her that first day--a happy girl, looking at him with the long, straight glance of unawakened youth. A great wave of protecting love went out to meet that vision. Self was lost in its immensity. As he had found her, so, please God, she was still and so he would leave her.
Then, somewhere in the back of his brain, a question sprang to vivid life. Was she the same? He knew that all day he had been fighting back that question. Last night something had frightened him--something glimpsed for a moment in Esther's face when she had come in from the garden to say good-night. Fancy, perhaps, or a trick of the lamplight. She could not really have changed. He would not allow himself even to dream that she had changed.