He looked across the meadow that night at the lighted blinds of Stella's windows and anticipated an evening when those windows would be dark and the cottage without an inhabitant.
"Very soon," he murmured to himself, "very soon." He had not one single throb of pity for her now, not a single speculation whither she would go or what she would make of her life.

His own defence of her had now become a fault of hers.

He wished her no harm, he argued, but in a week's time there must be no light shining behind those blinds..