Vera

een waiting for were upstairs shut in with her dead father, Lucy went

urnt-up grass along the top of the cliff, and the dusty road that passed the gate, and the glittering sea, and th

a sail on the sea, nor a line of distant smoke from any steamer, neither was there once the flash of a

xpression as the bright blank world before her. Her f

ever since she could remember he had been everything in life to her. She had had no thought since she grew up for anybody but her father. There was no room for any other thought, so completely did he fill her heart. They had done everything together, shared everything together, dodged the winters together, settled in charming places, seen the same beautiful things, read the same books, talked, laughed, had friends,-heaps of friends; wherever they were her father seemed at once to have friends, adding them to the mass

r. Dead.

over to herself.

o be alone. Wit

over to herself.

his quick eyes that saw everything, some unusual grasses by the road-side, and had stopped and gathered them, excited to find such rare ones, and had taken them back with him to study, and had explained them to her and made her see profoundly interesting, important things in them, in these grasses which, till he touched them, had seemed just grasses. That is what he did with everything,-touched it into life and delight. The grasses lay in the dining-room now, waiti

nd so hot. He loved heat. They

sh of water, crockery being carefully set down. Presently the women would come and tell her everything was ready, and she could go back to him

f, looking at it with a kind of cold comprehension. Her mind was quite clear. Every detail of what had happened was

on either side of the gate, and presently a man passed between her eyes and the sea. She did not notice h

scious, obviously, that any one was going by, his attention was surprised away from himself and almost he had stopped to examine the strange creature more closely. His code, however, prevented that, and he continued along the further fifty yards of bushes and trees that hid the other half of the garden from the road, but more slowly, slower and slower, till at the end of the garden where the road left it behind and went on

'm so lonely. I can't stand it. I must sp

determination on the part of public opinion that he should for a space be alone with his sorrow. Alone with sorrow,-of all ghastly things for a man to be alone with! It was an outrage, he felt, to condemn a man to that; it was the cruellest form of solitary confinement. He had come to Cornwall because it took a long time to get to, a whole day in the train there and a whole day in the train back, clipping the week, the minimum of time

ange eyes she wasn't just ordinary. She wouldn't mind letting him talk to her f

and took off his hat, and the girl looked at him blankly just as if she still didn't see hi

se of her eyes. 'I-I'm ho

bloodlessly cool. Her hands, folded on the top bar of the gate, looked more than cool, they looked cold; like hands in winter, shrunk and small with cold. She had bobbed hair, he noticed, so that it was impossible to tel

egan Wemyss again; and then h

he said, his voice trembling with unhappiness, 'if yo

eyes became a little human. It got through to her consciousness tha

asked, really seeing h

ut it isn't that. I've had a mi

ance of it, by the unfairness of s

still miles away from him, deep in i

ould be doing a great kindness. Because you're a stranger I can talk to you about it if you'll let me. Just because we're strangers I could talk. I hav

is unhappiness, with his ast

foundly detached, observing from another world, as it were, this extreme heat and agitation, but at least she saw him now, she did with a faint curiosity consider him. He was like some elemental force in his

in,' she said, 'if you had come ye

it in as level and ordinary a voice as if she had b

orry and pain, and of what, if he allowed himself to think, to become morbid, might well grow into a most unfair, tormenting doubt. He understood, as he would not have understood a week ago, what her whole attitude, her rigidity meant. He stared at he

uation was putting into everything he did, 'That s

h one of his, with the other he