Jocelyn by John Galsworthy

It was the third day since Giles had left her on the Cornice Road, and Jocelyn had not seen him since. She had been told of his wife's sudden death. It had seemed to her like a fable with no certain meaning in it; but the news had left her strangely excited, full of fear and doubt, with the feeling that she was, like a swimmer, out of her depth and struggling in dark and uncertain waters. She longed wistfully for some glimpse into the dim future. She felt a tremulous compassion for the woman whose life had been so full of pain, whose end had been so sudden; and with that compassion was mingled a sense of remorse, of bitter regret that she had done her a great and unmerited wrong. During the first days of her own humiliation there had been no room for that feeling in the lonely stress of her spirit; now, when the tide of her shame ebbed, when the unwitting cause of that shame slipped silently and swiftly away from the reach of her secret resentment, this other pain came. But, above all else, she had a restless yearning to see Giles, to rest the burden of her grief and of her fear upon his shoulders; to shake herself once more free from this nightmare of whirling shadows and dark pitfalls, and step into the sunshine of life. She felt that he could help her, and he alone.

As she moved softly about the room arranging flowers and books with supple, slender fingers -- Jocelyn's fingers were always busy, moving swiftly to their various ends -- she thought for the hundredth time of the wording of the note that was folded into her dress --