It was as if what she had done was plotted on different and incongruous maps, which made it seem to her sometimes that different lines or levels of conduct must have coexisted, and sometimes that what she had really done was some yet other indiscernible thing. She had worked it out, or partly worked it out, that it was her duty to hold to Randall; yet the reasoning of this and the idea of this, though persistently present, lacked clarity. She did not really believe that Randall would come back; nor did she believe that her actions, one way or the other, would affect him any more at all. He would not be oppressed by her faithfulness or released by her lack of it. The cutting of the painter had been an idea that concerned only herself: it was her own freedom only which had been in question. Randall, without further reference to her, was in possession of his. Why then had she not cut the painter? The intoxication of freedom had even come to her, like a helpful attendant spirit, at the due moment. But she had dismissed it.
Here she was bound to reflect upon the notion of the sacrament of marriage which had so authoritatively come up for her in her talk with Douglas. The notion was constantly present to her mind now, but in an utterly inert way. It was like a great lump which she kept turning over but in which she could discern no significant shape. That was something which she had simply not thought out to the end, and she had not done so because she must somehow have realized that it was not essential to her decision. It was not that she had from this derived some decisive command of duty which she now saw, because her poor heart was elsewhere, as an empty form. She could have born this comprehensible 'pain more easily. She suspected she had not been moved by the command of duty at all.
Yet when she tried to see her conduct as determined by emotion, by desire, by a will seeking, however deviously, its own felicity, she could not on those suppositions either make sense of her actions. She had let go of the exceedingly, dear and 'precious Felix whom she loved and needed with all her heart, almost, it seemed to her, because of a naked meaningless incapacity to take what she wanted. Or was it that some other, stronger, emotion had really moved her, some completely mad, even almost corrupt, emotion of sentimental sympathy for Randall? At a certain moment perhaps she had not been able to bear the break with Randall, ignoring the dreadful fact that it had already taken place; and the flood of feeling which had perhaps been fatal to Felix seemed to her indubitably more like some unrealistic haze of sentiment than like the heavenly love desiderated by Douglas Swann. That, unless it was very heavily disguised, she did not feel to be in the situation at all.
Miranda was perhaps the key to the matter; yet had she acted, persuaded by Miranda, for the sake of Miranda? Her daughter had, in some simple terms, reminded her of her duty; yet Ann could only remember having felt, at this reminder, a sort of irritation. But Miranda had certainly shaken her. There had been some terrible accuracy of aim in Miranda's words. And Miranda had helped to set loose that fatal pity for Randall. Perhaps even her cry of ‘I don't want to be a step-daughter! had worked with Ann more deeply than she realized. There was no denying that the child herself was very disturbed at present. Ann had been shocked, and indeed frightened, to hear from Nancy Bowshott that Miranda had broken all her: dolls. Her own failure, after their momentous discussion, to communicate, at all with her daughter left this massacre as something barbarous, fearful and unexplained. Ann yearned to help her child but could not. She grieved to find herself regarding Miranda's presence in the house as almost menacing, a source of strange rays; and if her own decision had indeed been 'because of' Miranda she still could not in the end see quite why.
She could not see her actions. But the pain of their results, the pain of loss, was overwhelming and with a dreadful separate quality of its own. It was as if she were perpetually haunted and mocked by a music of happiness which came from some inaccessible elsewhere. It was the sheer beauty of love which at such times she apprehended and at such times felt herself to have criminally betrayed; and what she had denied would not let her rest, coming to her as a sort of golden aura about her memories of Felix. She felt herself here sometimes as the victim of a sheer wilful vagueness, one who had made, in the calculations of life, simply an unnecessary howler. She had not been trained for this, she told herself. Yet ought she not to have been? And with this she came back to the fruitless task of asking herself whether after all she had done the right thing.
Felix had written. He had written such a quiet kindly gentlemanly letter that Ann had wondered for a moment whether he were not perhaps relieved. Perhaps he was glad really to have tried and. failed and to be able to turn with a clear heart elsewhere. Yet she could not credit this. The gentleness was a part of Felix, a part that made her love him, perhaps also a part that made her lose him. She recalled his cry, 'I've become, with you, invisible. He too, alas, was one of the invisible ones. She had opened his letter trembling with a scarcely rational hope that he would, on reflection, not accept her refusal, that he would again press her. She had read through his resigned considerate message and burnt it at once. She could not now remember its exact wording and did not try. How much had Felix really wanted her? She would never know. But Felix would certainly survive.
Ann pressed along the path between the gallicas, her Wellingtons deep in the wet grass which needed its next mowing. She noted with an expert eye which buds would be ready, in three days' time, for her flower-arrangement at the Women's Institute. Perhaps it was just as well that Clare would miss the competition this year; she never became resigned to not winning. Ann reached the bonfire and set the bucket down. The big mound of foliage and grass cuttings occupied the corner of the nursery site, and beyond the wire fence the fields sloped down towards the Marsh. There was a distant sound of folded sheep. The near sky was paling to a watery grey and there was a segment of rainbow with its foot on Brenzett church tower. Further off, towards Dungeness, were dark clouds and a shadowy curtain of rain. But the nursery slope lightened.
The bonfire was wet, but Ann hollowed out its ashy centre as she had done a hundred times before and began to stuff her waste paper in, taking it in cautious handfuls from under the weighty stones so that it should not blow about in the brisk wind. When she had packed in enough she rearranged the foliage on top of it, poured on a little paraffin and tried to strike a match. It took her some time to get one alight, and she cupped it down to the fringe of the paper. When the paper was well afire she gave the structure an adjusting kick with her Wellington.
Something seemed to burst, and a stream of smaller torn-up papery fragments descended from one side of the bonfire. Absently Ann began to boot them back in again. Then she saw that they were fragments of photographs and she stooped to pick one up. It was a piece of a. photograph of Felix. She stared at the little image of his face, upset and. startled by the coincidence. Then she picked up another fragment. It was also a piece of a-photograph of Felix. She picked up another. The fire was blazing up. Ann kicked back the flaming paper and the already smouldering branches and tried to pull out whatever was not already alight. She burnt her hands, but rescued and threw clear a half-charred envelope and the heap of pieces which seemed to have been coming out of it; and as the wind seized and began to scatter them, she threw herself on top of them on the grass. Half sitting half lying on her discovery she began to turn the fragments over, trying to shield them from the wind at the same time.
There was a lot of stuff, some photographs, some newspaper cuttings, some letters, and as far as she could see, as with a kind of horror she turned them over, they all related to Felix. She wondered if she were dreaming or the victim of some devil's trick. She recognized bits of two snapshots which she had bitterly missed from her album. She deciphered yellow fragments of wartime newspapers. With trembling hands she held them together, the jagged dismembered pieces of ghostly occasions, the vanished moments, the dear looks and smiles and caught familiar glances. The pieces of manuscript too were all in his writing, they seemed to be letters. Then, as she began clumsily to assemble them, she realized what letters they were. And with that she realized everything. My dear Miranda — Ann stood up. Her shoulder and side were soaked by the wet grass.