Chapter XX

October and November wore themselves away,
and the days went by, the one very like the
other. Mrs. Otway, after her long hours of work,
or of official visiting among the soldiers' and sailors'
wives and mothers, fell into the way of going out
late in the afternoon for a walk by herself. She had
grown to dread with a nervous dislike the constant
meeting with acquaintances and neighbours, the usual
rather futile exchange of remarks about the War, or
about the local forms of war and charitable work in
which she and they were now all engaged. The stillness
and the solitariness of the evening walk soothed
her sore and burdened heart.

Often she would walk to Dorycote and back, feeling
that the darkened streets -- for Witanbury had followed
the example of London -- and, even more, the
country roads beyond, were haunted, in a peaceful
sense, by the presence of the man who had so often
taken that same way from his house to hers.

It was during one of these evening walks that there
came to her a gleam of hope and light, and from a
source from which she would never have expected it
to come.

She was walking swiftly along on her way home,
going across the edge of the Market Square, when
she heard herself eagerly hailed with "Is it Mrs.
Otway?" She stopped, and answered, not very
graciously, "Yes, I'm Mrs. Otway -- who is it?"

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v?