Chapter II: I

All the afternoon the scene from the train window had been the dreary wastes of Cornwall moors, trees tortured and dwarfed by twisting sea gales, stretches of furze, gorse, and rock, occasionally enlivened by sprightly clusters of purple flowers which tossed in the summer wind. Perhaps Nora had made a mistake to come. The Cornwall of which she had dreamed in London had been that of rocky coasts, with brilliant contrasts of sea, cliffs, and sky, and a midsummer sun which shone daily. Such beauty, she remembered now, had its foundation only in Margaret Abington’s raptures over the summer she had spent at the farmhouse near Trebavas, where Nora was going; a memory to which Margaret returned again and again. Usually her friend had been right about places.

Nora’s travelling companions had done nothing to relieve the monotony of the journey. Opposite her sat a pale, dark man whose spiritless expression and well-kept, bloodless hands suggested illness. For some time he had looked as if he wanted to talk to some one, but she had gazed steadily out of the window. She was afraid he would begin to tell her about his ruined health. Beside him was a young mother with a very active child, a smeary-faced little girl with thin, molasses-tinted hair which her mother had tried to curl. A querulous voice followed her succession of bobbings up and down, ‘Now, Annie, be good; sit still, Annie. No, you can’t have more sweeties, dearie.’

The child was now plunging toward the fourth traveller in the carriage, whose face, hidden behind his London paper, Nora had not seen since he entered. When the porter had arranged his luggage in the rack, very good, but long used, the dull sheen of it, its substantial quality, had made her curious about its owner, a tall man in shaggy tweeds and golf stockings who had slipped quietly into the seat beside her a moment before the train moved. He had the careless, travelled ease of the bags over his head, an aloofness to his companions in the carriage.

Annie’s waving, sticky hands now clutched at the defences of newspaper.

‘Annie,’ shouted her mother, ‘don’t trouble the gentleman. I’m sorry, sir,’ she apologized, giving the child’s hands a quick smack.

‘Not at all. No trouble,’ he murmured, once more resuming his reading.

Nora, roused from the dreariness of the landscape, had looked quickly toward the disturbed traveller. He was, as she had suspected, like those young men she had met at Ellen’s, who were nothing in particular, with the baffling charm of nonchalant, cheerful acceptance of that importance which is superior to any mere profession or slavery to the arts. They had achieved significance at birth, with no trouble to themselves. If it had been trouble——But this stranger, at second glance, was not entirely of their brotherhood. He was lean like them, but with more iron about him. His face was bronzed, his very dark hair burned by the sun. His prominent cheek-bones and his nose and jaw had the angularity which might be Scotch. Pictures of Highland chieftains showed the same hawk profile. His general bearing, his erectness as he sat in the swaying carriage, suggested military discipline—the army—a man who gave orders.

The pale man, encouraged by the confusion, looked up once more at Nora. He pointed to the purple flowers clustered against the rocks.

‘Foxgloves. That’s Cornwall. They’re everywhere.’

‘But it’s desolate country,’ she said.

‘You wait.’ A bland smile lighted up the drooping features. ‘Wait till you get near the sea.’ His gaze wandered to the man next to her, but the newspaper was too much of a barrier. He went on talking to Nora. ‘You’ve never been in these parts before?’

‘No.’

‘You’re travelling toward the coast?’

‘Yes.’ Then, not wishing to seem rude to a person so obviously ill, she added, ‘I’m going to Trebavas. You know it? I get off at Pelreath.’

There was a rustle of newspaper beside her. Her neighbor’s eyes were turned in her direction. They were deep blue, with a direct glance that did not avoid hers, as he slowly measured her with a detached, swift interest before he returned to his paper.

‘Very fine coast,’ the pale man said. ‘I know the south coast better. Around Penzance. I go there for the climate.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He was ill, then. She was conscious of the difference between the two men in the carriage, the tanned vigor of one, the anæmic transparency of the other. He wouldn’t live long. Perhaps he knew.

A deep voice interrupted Nora’s speculations. ‘Would you care to look at this?’ The man in tweeds was holding out his newspaper.

Although she didn’t care to read, she thanked him, and made a pretence of examining the headings on the first page.

‘The cricket matches at Lord’s—they’re on page 12,’ he suggested.

She smiled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t care much about cricket.’

‘Oh.’ The rising and falling of his interjection was like Tabby’s.

‘I don’t understand cricket.’

‘It’s very simple, really.’ He was now smiling too, his smile making him unexpectedly boyish and a little less assured. His blue eyes had a gleam which attracted the smeary little girl a second time. She turned from the pictures in her mother’s gaudy magazine and looked at him. Then, dropping down from her seat, she planted a sticky fist upon his knee.

‘Annie, don’t you bother the gentleman.’

‘Please don’t be troubled on my account.’ Again that aloof expression which covered his face like a mask. ‘I, too, am going to Trebavas,’ he said, turning once more toward Nora to escape the mother’s embarrassed apologies. ‘It’s an unusual place to go. Very isolated and dull, really.’

‘I had a friend who spent a summer there and loved it. It’s because of her I’m going.’

He crossed one leg over the other, and shifted his position in his corner seat so that they faced each other. ‘Yes—the quiet. I understand. And very fine cliffs.’

‘She has told me about them. The colors—the blackness of them and then the deep green sea.’

‘My old school friend is rector there. I’ve been coming to him for short visits a long time now. Rather a nice old Norman church. He’s very keen about it. He’ll be glad to show it to you. It’s away from the village, close to the cliffs. One hears the sea all through the prayers.’

‘How lovely!’

‘Yes, but——’ He looked smilingly toward Nora’s childlike face under her severe blue travelling hat. ‘It may be too unexciting for a young person.’

He evidently took her for an eccentric American schoolgirl, wandering about in queer places. She smiled to herself, and to hide the quiver of her lips looked out of the window again.

With late afternoon, the sun, falling lower, made long shadows on the moor and deepened the mauve of the massed foxgloves to purple. One would not care to walk alone in this threatening, waste country. The sick man and the troublesome child first went to sleep, then the tired mother. Nora and her neighbor were left to themselves. They conversed from time to time in low tones. A shyness swept over her. She took up the paper lying between them.

‘I wonder if they’ll take Germany into the League this summer.’

‘You believe in the League? I thought Americans didn’t, you know.’

‘Yes—many of us. We place our hopes in anything that——’

‘You have no interest in the glories of our late disturbance, then?’ he inquired.

He was clearly enough a military man. No need to be silly or get excited. One’s real opinions—they are saved for the rare moments—not for a railway carriage.

‘No,’ she answered, ‘not very much.’

There was something queer about his eyes, behind the deep blue of them and the directness of their glance, which she could not understand. He was hiding something—not from her only, a stranger, but from every one. Some hurt—some painful secret.

Looking out, Nora saw Pelreath painted on the station benches. Some ponies with two-wheeled carts were waiting near the platform. As she began to bestir herself, the sleepers awoke. The tall stranger was lifting her bags from the rack and carrying them out to the platform. He raised his hat, and turned to get his own luggage. The pale man smiled at her, the mother and child waved. In front of her a slight Englishman in clerical dress was examining the passengers. He looked a little like Father Stokesbury—the same brilliant smile.

‘Neville, old boy! I couldn’t see you at first.’

The wind-swept wastes, the rocks, the furze and gorse. A pang of desolation swept Nora. She had come all this distance to throw herself among strangers.

‘Miss Deming? The American lady? I got the pony an’ jingle over this way, Miss.’ A mild little man had approached her, his stiff hat held like a salver in front of him.

As Nora climbed into the cart, she saw her travelling companion driving off in a grey two-seater with his old friend. He lifted his hat and smiled before they disappeared behind the tall hedges of the road toward Trebavas.

‘The rector’s got his friend down again,’ observed Nora’s driver. ‘Army man. Major West.’ As they passed between the hedges which shut out the landscape, he introduced himself as Thomas Pentillie, Mrs. Bodmin’s new husband. She was Bodmin now only for business. They had been married two weeks. ‘In time for the summer visitors,’ he explained. ‘I’m a big help to her that way.’

The road turned suddenly and ascended above the valley. There was a rush of air, and then Nora saw the sea. It was booming against a deep purple cliff lost in green water and pale green spray.

‘Oh,’ she breathed.

Mrs. Pentillie, who as Mrs. Bodmin had known Miss Abington, a very pleasant American lady always out on the rocks painting, ushered Nora up to a little room on the third floor with a view of the sea.

‘It was hers—your friend’s. I remember her wantin’ the top o’ the house,’ Mrs. Pentillie said.

Nora stood looking out of the open window. A chill filled the room now that the sun lay low over the water. It was almost time for supper, Mrs. Pentillie had announced. Only a moment or two before she had to join the strange Britishers below, sit down at a table crowded with holiday visitors. She could hear their voices. Somehow she had not thought of them before—only seacoast and great spaces. She was afraid. She wasn’t very hungry. If she could walk out toward the sea first—not have any supper. Walk toward the church—a bell tinkled, tinkled. Doors slammed. Some one laughed. Again the bell. Nora washed hastily, brushed back her hair, and went downstairs.

The other boarders—paying guests they said in England, even at Mrs. Pentillie’s possibly—were already seated. Nora slipped into a vacant chair. A strange man, not Mr. Pentillie, was at the head of the table, carving a guinea fowl. Nora sniffed at it hungrily. An angular woman next to her smiled.

‘Miss Deming, let me make you acquainted with every one.’ She began to call out the names of the people gathered around the table.

‘Oh, the American lady,’ commented a stout woman down near the guinea fowls. She paused in a monologue she had begun upon the Second Coming. ‘We been hearing about you. Travelling all alone, too. You Americans are so adventurous.’

Opposite Nora sat a husband and wife talking together. There was something so united, so indivisible about them, that Nora sensed their relationship at once. Next to Miss Wallis, who had conducted the introductions, were two women who looked exactly like her, the same dun coloring which was neither brunette nor blonde, the same bloodless faces and bony figures. They were sisters, Miss Wallis told her, all taking the holiday they looked forward to the whole year.

‘After a winter in London,’ she concluded.

The other two bobbed behind or in front of their obstructing relative, and said a word or two to Nora. This was a beautiful place. She would love it. Miss Wallis explained about the others in a low tone during the passing of plates. The man serving, Mr. Downey, was on furlough from Central Africa. Some Government job. His wife hadn’t seen him in three years. She couldn’t stand the climate. The child between them, a bright little thing, was almost four years old. Sad—living that way. And the two on the other side, aunt and niece, both post-office clerks in London. Nora looked in the direction of a stout black-haired woman with a face like a tomato and a girl much like her, slightly less red, with a shaggy mane of coarse, dark bobbed hair.

‘They can’t talk without swearing,’ Miss Wallis said sadly.

On Nora’s end of the table were two middle-aged women dressed in heavy black. They were discussing the church services of the preceding Sunday. The church was, then, not very far away.

After supper, when the rest of the procession trooped into the drawing-room, the Wallis sisters offered to show Nora the path to the cliffs. In a week they had learned all the pleasant walks in the vicinity. As the four passed back of the house, two of Mrs. Pentillie’s Leghorn hens trailed after them. Cows in a near-by farmyard looked up, and then came slowly toward the fence. As they walked along the narrow hedge-bordered path, the youngest of the three sisters joined Nora. She was probably not much over thirty, less neutral than the other two, with a sturdy spring to her step unlike the drag of theirs.

‘Two men among us,’ she began. ‘One a Quaker—the other from Africa. And both married. Rare, isn’t it? Is this what I’ve come down from London for?’

Her sisters behind laughed heartily. They regarded Dora as a terrible wag, Nora guessed almost immediately.

‘And the Quaker lady hangs on to her husband as faithfully as to her pocket-book,’ Dora went on.

All three regarded the middle-aged femininity of their fellow guests as a tremendous joke on Adeline Pinks, the post-office niece, probably as much on her aunt, one of those maiden ladies who never knows that her day is over.

‘They keep an eye out for what Pentillie will bring from the station. “Another woman,” they said, when you drove up before supper.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Nora said, laughing.

They climbed over one slate hedge. A light mist lay over the cliffs above the sea, which resounded from below. The high grass between the hedge-rows was very wet, the foxgloves against the stone walls drooping with their load of dew. As she was mounting the stairway made of flat stones over the second hedge, she heard her first lark. The bird had swooped up, and was singing, singing as he climbed higher and higher. She sat on the flat top of the stile, looking up toward the sky and listening to the warblings, fainter and fainter. Just as the poets had told her, singing as all of her life she had dreamed they would sing. The three sisters stood waiting for her to climb over the hedge. While she had been sitting on the stile, the larks had slowly gathered in the sky, one after another, hundreds of them, it seemed, singing together, close to the last yellow light.

They went on toward the cliffs. Far below sounded the sea, covered with a lacy haze, like thick cobwebs. They stood, looking down, not speaking a word.

They followed the path close to the edge of the cliffs, as it twisted in and out. Another hedge. Standing on the last tone, Nora saw a square tower rising above a dip in the flat stretches of green. The church. A queer feeling, like pain, made her turn.

‘Shouldn’t we be going back? It’s getting dark.’

Between the last hedge-rows, in sight of Mrs. Pentillie’s lights, night had already fallen. They crept cautiously forward. In the drawing-room the household was gathered around the Government official from Africa telling tales. Nora paused at the doorway, listened a moment, and then went upstairs.

II

In the morning she hurried through breakfast and took the path which led to the sea. The sky above her was deep sapphire, the sun strong and clear. She could hear the lambs bleating from the other side of the hedges, the tinkle of bells, the ecstasy of the morning sea. She followed the general direction of the preceding night, and sat close to the edge of the cliff, looking down. Some sheep were grazing in the grassy crevices between the black rocks. The gulls swept close over her head, and dipped down to the water, with hoarse shrieks. A sweetness—a familiar sweetness was all around her. Wee purple flowers close to the ground everywhere. Thyme—wild thyme. She knew from the smell. She pressed a purple cluster between her fingers.

A crunching of rocks, and footsteps approaching. Possibly some one from Mrs. Pentillie’s house. Nora gazed steadily out upon the sea.

‘Good-morning.’ The tweeds—the familiar voice. ‘I felt sure I should see you again.’

Major West seated himself on the rock beside her. ‘Jolly day, isn’t it? So you’re a near neighbor of Reggie’s? Over there? How very good! And do you think you’ll like this place?’

She assured him that she liked it, that already she loved it. Trebavas was what she had wanted. She went on to describe the Pentillie gathering, its middle-aged quality. They would not bother her. She liked them that way best, she had decided. They wouldn’t wander far away from Mrs. Pentillie’s summer-house, with the British flag floating over it, a border of geraniums, and a comfortable view of the sea.

They sat looking over the shining blue water. He brought out a pipe, knocked it against the rock. The sheep bounded up the trail and tinkled past them. Once more the larks were beginning to sing, a faint, cheerful squeak only, high in the sky.

‘Reggie’s in the church. Should you care to see it? Oh—I forgot to introduce myself yesterday. Neville West——’

She murmured her name in return, and he helped her up from the rock. They climbed over the stiles, passed rude heaps of stone, like the ruins of a castle wall, and entered the churchyard. Reginald Enderby stood in the doorway. As she saw him in the sunshine, holding a funny broad-brimmed hat like Father Stokesbury’s, he looked enough like him to be an older brother—older than Father Stokesbury, so long ago. When he smiled, he was like an old friend.

‘Miss Deming would like to see the church, Reggie.’

‘Delighted, dear boy. It’s really a snug little place, Miss Deming.’

The church was like a twilight chamber. Its thick walls were cut by Norman windows with dim glass; there was a Norman font near the door, with four fat legs and a funny face cut into the stone.

‘Major West says this old chap looks like me.’ The rector twinkled.

It was a beautiful little church in its dusky way, with its timbered roof, its black-oak rood screen, its dull seats, and grey stone walls. Looking out through the open doorway, one felt the peace of its shade, a retreat from the burning brightness of the sky and sea. The rector pointed out the tombstones in the churchyard propped up with buttresses.

‘To keep the winter winds from blowing them away,’ he explained. ‘We have some jolly blows here then.’

She glanced back for another look at the interior. ‘You like our old places?’ he asked her.

‘Very much.’

‘Perhaps you’d be kind enough to have tea with us in the garden this afternoon. The widow of the former rector is coming. It would be a pleasure to her, I know. There are some ruins of the thirteenth-century monastery there I’d like to show you.’

Major West walked back toward Mrs. Pentillie’s with Nora. She was late for dinner. Mr. Downey had finished serving.

‘Well, where you been?’ inquired the large woman, who was still arguing the tenets of Seventh Day Adventism. ‘I thought you’d jumped over the cliff.’

* * * * *

In the rectory garden Nora was seated beside Mrs. Cecil, the widow of Father Enderby’s predecessor, white-haired, her large hands covered with diamonds. As Mrs. Cecil talked, a cigarette dangled from her mouth. When the others took the burden of the conversation, she smoked with quick puffs one cigarette after another. She was like a chimney, with good drawing powers.

Major West talked very little. He sat holding his pipe, looking across first at one and then the other of Reggie’s guests. When they were exploring the monastery after tea, Father Enderby took possession of Nora, Major West coming up slowly behind with Mrs. Cecil, who had little interest in ecclesiastical remains, she said.

‘I’m one myself,’ she informed Nora. ‘Not in very good condition. Can’t you restore me—like the church—Reggie?’

The monastery ruins were a hoary background for the garden. Foxgloves grew close to the lichen-covered walls, and there were clematis vines over one sunny end.

‘Charming—charming,’ Mrs. Cecil murmured at appropriate intervals, in spite of the fact that her best days had been spent here. Reggie really had improved the garden. Then she confided to Nora: ‘These men know nothing about my poor legs. Handsome man—Major West. Reggie’s always talking about him. How violent he looks sometimes! Don’t fall in love with him, my dear. Young girls always do with that kind of menacing desperation when it smiles at them.’ Mrs. Cecil laughed at her blush. ‘Take Reggie instead. He’s one of the sweetest creatures. A saint with a sense of humor.’

III

Nora had been in Trebavas a week. Since the day of the rectory tea, Reggie—she thought of him as Reggie always—had assumed the rôle of guide to the young American who had strayed into his quiet settlement. He offered himself and his two-seater in her service, Major West with comical dignity perched behind in the dicky, for a pilgrimage in search of such neighborhood antiquities as Cornish crosses and churches with Saxon walls, for a visit to the slate quarry, and a sight of the spot where Reggie had seen the very rare Cornish chough. Major West laughed at these excursions, but he did not refuse to join them.

In the primitive Cornwall scene of tumbling sea and rock, Major West, even in his rough country clothes, remained the sophisticate for whom a London club window in Saint James’s Street seemed the appropriate setting. The face, with the arrogant curve of nose and the jaw held with unconscious pride, was a powerful contrast to Reggie’s mild rusticity. But between the two men existed an understanding which Nora, as an outsider, envied. They shared innumerable ancient jokes, had been raw schoolboys together, made frequent references to the war when they, no matter how separated, had depended on each other. ‘Good old Reggie,’ Major West said of his friend. ‘Poor sinner,’ Reggie called the Major.

When they stretched out on the grassy heights of the cliffs in the golden hour before dinner, Reggie, as an amateur botanist, explained the native flowers blossoming luxuriously all around them. To an American they would be entirely strange—the gay, yellow Tom Thumb; the sea pinks which they called thrift, almost like American red clover in color, Nora told Reggie; the snowy bell-shaped campion, and the pink stone-crop covering the rocks.

In the midst of Reggie’s talk, Major West walked over to the edge of the cliff, and stood there tossing slate chips over the steep side. Nora joined him. Down—down—the stones rattled, until they could no longer be heard. The rocky walls, unrelieved by lichens, were blue-black zigzagging ravines against which the waves beat with a muttering, menacing thunder.

‘And to think that all these flowers grow close up to the edge of such horror,’ Nora whispered, as the spray struck the slate columns far below.

Major West nodded, turning his blue eyes, half-closed in a smile, toward her. ‘Jolly old show—the sea with the tide rushing in,’ he said, as they confronted the limitless expanse of convulsive green waste, upon which not even a sail was visible.

Above Doscastle Strand early in the afternoon when the tide was low, the three of them looked down upon the groups of men, women, and children seated on the rocks, lying out on the smooth white sand, or plunging into the sea. The children, as they threw themselves with shouts against the crests of waves, were like sporting elves, mere midgets of humanity. Even the men and women had a comically insignificant aspect, funny little wiggles of arms and legs, puny struts of importance up and down. Upon the height one felt Olympic grandeur and serenity, detachment from the pigmy concerns of earth.

‘Don’t you ever go down to swim?’ Nora asked Major West one day.

‘Not of late. I haven’t been swimming this summer.’

The day Reggie had church duties which carried him off to Exeter, Major West and Nora visited the caves, reached by a steep trail cut into the cliff. They entered the murky chamber and looked out upon the tossing, watery plain which could not reach them. But as the tide rose higher, the waves sent laps of water into the cave. One drew farther back. The water next time came closer. Soon the cave was filled with a great clamor. The sea shouted, boomed like a cannon. Nora scrambled hastily up the steep path to escape the crashing terror of the ocean-filled caves.

‘You make me think of a Himalaya goat,’ he said, coming on more slowly behind her.

While they rested on the grassy slopes at the top, he talked carelessly about India, his expeditions in the hills, the sunsets over the Mediterranean when he was going to Egypt. One gathered that he had been everywhere.

She, in turn, launched out on her favorite political topics.

‘I didn’t believe women really cared about that sort of thing,’ he commented. ‘But you Americans are different, I see.’

‘No, I don’t think we are.’

‘Then you’ve been with men more—talked with them—got their point of view.’

‘Oh!’ Nora gasped, looking at him with wide-open eyes. Then she laughed. As she reflected on his magnificent conclusion, she laughed harder and harder. The delight—the wonder—the ridiculousness of fooling people that way. That she—from men—she could not stop laughing.

‘Do—do help me,’ she begged. ‘I——’ Again ripples of helpless mirth swept over her, waves, torrents. She could never stop.

‘I know what will make you stop laughing,’ Major West said, looking down at her with uplifted brows.

‘Tell me,’ she entreated between her seizures. ‘Anything.’

‘You wouldn’t like it.’

‘Yes—yes.’

‘You are very lovely when you laugh that way.’ He pronounced the words with triumphant calm.

She looked solemn in an instant.

‘See—I knew I could make you stop.’

‘But I—I must tell you why—why I laughed.’ She hesitated. ‘Some other time.’

The next morning she found him pacing back and forth at the end of Mrs. Pentillie’s lane.

‘I thought I’d catch you here,’ he began carelessly. ‘Shall we walk toward Doscastle Strand?’

He sprawled lazily upon a mound of thyme, sniffing at it, then with his head raised against his clenched hands, regarded Nora seated near him with his disturbing, direct gaze. His eyes were like bottomless wells—depths she could not measure—his face a handsome, unintelligible defence. He had none of Reggie’s comforting simplicity. She felt as if he were highly amused at her American gawkishness.

‘Do you know, I do like you, Miss Deming,’ he said. ‘Really.’ He gave a short laugh when he saw a flush spreading to her hair, flaming in the sunshine. ‘Usually I detest young girls. Their chatter bores me—their chatter about themselves. But you—you converse so wisely, you know.’

‘I—I’m not so young,’ she protested.

‘Oh, come.’

‘I’m—I’m thirty-two,’ she confessed.

‘Magnificent. Now I understand why we get on so well together. Poor Reggie! He’s shocked at the way American parents let their young charge about unguarded. He’s been trying to take care of you during your Cornwall sojourn. And you—why you’re almost my generation. I’m close to forty.’

She noticed for the first time the threads of grey in his hair, the deep lines around his eyes and mouth. ‘I’m going to tell you why I laughed so hard yesterday, when you——’

‘I haven’t an idea what I said or did.’

‘You said I’d talked to men a lot—had their point of view.’

‘Well, you have, you know.’

‘But not from talking to men. Only to women.’

‘Come, now. That’s a bit thick. Even American women——’

‘Yes, I’m serious. I’ve lived all my life in hives of women.’

‘Good God! Not really?’

‘It’s true. I have. It’s a man’s world I’ve wanted to know—tried to know. What ought to be everybody’s world. But women all the time—caught in petty squabbles and backstair talk. Nothing big—nothing——’

‘But isn’t that what the dear creatures want?’

‘No,’ Nora contradicted, beating her fist against a rock. ‘No—no. So many of us—what we want—I can’t explain. It’s endless. I can’t make you see. What we have, it’s pitiful—stifling. I can’t stand it any more!’ She burst into unexpected tears, and threw herself face downward on the ground.

She was so ashamed—women and their tears—how she hated them! And she had degraded herself even more by pretending it was intellectual participation in the lives of men she wanted. He would know. He couldn’t help guessing. How he would despise her—weak, ridiculous creature. But she was helpless—no control before this man. No one before—this way——What—what had changed her?

She rose quickly, tried to plan escape. If she could run away, not see the kindness—the pity in his eyes.

‘I’m—ashamed—ashamed,’ she murmured, her eyes still brimming over with tears.

He seized her hand so that she could not escape. ‘No—no,’ he protested. ‘I understand. But a man’s world isn’t what you think. It’s a rotten bore—most of it.’

He was like her. He had missed something. The more she saw of this dark, grim friend of Reggie’s, the surer she felt that some reason lay behind his reticence, his consistent distaste for talking about the adventurous life she envied. She had thought first that he was a cynic, a man of the world who tossed everything serious away from him. But when he told her of his childhood, especially of his mother who died when he was nine, a wistful boyishness replaced his usual mocking tone.

‘I come of an army family,’ he confided one day when the two of them were searching out new cliff heights, new views far away from the rectory. ‘Sandhurst was as inevitable for me as Oxford for Reggie. When I was a youngster, my mother used to talk about Parliament. She was keen about one’s social responsibilities. Perhaps if she had lived——But Parliament’s an awful bore, they tell me. All talk and muddling along. The army didn’t give me time to get bored—constant excitement—first one part of the world and then another. But after a time——’ He broke off suddenly and began to talk of other things.

His references to the army were always that way, apologetic, unenthusiastic. He hated the army. She was sure of it. The conviction gave her an unaccountable upliftment.

After dinner one night Major West came upon Nora perched on the top of the stile listening to the skylarks.

‘Reggie’s driven me off. He’s in solemn session with the vestry.’ He sat down beside her.

The sun was glorious fire close to the sea, which turned pink, lavender, grey-green as the sun dipped lower and lower. Above them larks, faint specks in the darkening sky, continued to sing.

‘Let’s walk,’ Nora suggested, drawing her coat around her. ‘It’s cold the moment the sun is gone.’

As they skirted the edge of the cliff, the shadows imperceptibly crept toward them, but they walked on. The stunted trees, the hedges, the hollows were changed into black shapes which rose up suddenly all around. Nora stumbled in a tangle of gorse.

‘We’ve lost it,’ she said, as Major West took her arm and tried to guide her back to the path.

Below them the sea moaned, the circling gulls cried. Another step, and the sea made a nearer clamor. The edge of the cliff, they now realized for the first time, was lost in darkness. Major West struck a match. The feeble little circle of light intensified the thick night surrounding them.

‘Don’t move,’ he said, exploring the ground around them with his cane. ‘We may be close to the edge.’

The undulating folds of grey, dark blue, black, shut out the trees, the hedges. The tinkle of a sheep bell, the twitter of a sleepy bird broke the silence between the regular beat of the waves far below.

He took a cautious step backward, drawing her by the hand after him. Another step backward. He lit a second match.

‘This seems to be a path.’

Slowly they made their way, stumbling over rocks, over roots, over deep, moist furze, the ground rising up against their feet unexpectedly.

Major West bent over Nora. ‘You’re all right?’ he asked. ‘You aren’t afraid?’ He laughed at his question.

‘No, no, not afraid,’ she insisted in an unnatural, weak voice. The nearness of his face to hers, brushing it almost, his shoulder against hers, the pressure of his arm overpowered her with the sense of their intimacy, the night bringing them together, enclosing them in a small, dark room. No, she wasn’t afraid, hovering, maybe, on the edge of the precipice. They stood motionless, then once more advanced one step at a time.

At last Mrs. Pentillie’s lights winked in the distance.

‘We were close to the edge,’ Nora said.

‘Yes, I didn’t tell you. Back there, when I reached out with my stick, there was nothing.’

‘Oh,’ she shuddered.

Then they plunged through the caverns of the hedge toward the lighted windows and the sound of voices in the drawing-room. They crossed the lawn unobserved, and Nora guided him to the main road on the other side.

‘Good-night,’ she said hastily, drawing her hand away from his and hurrying back to the house.

In her room she sank down on the floor in front of the low window. She was trembling all over. She clutched the sill, and leaned her head over her tightly clasped hands. No, she hadn’t been afraid out there lost in the night. But now——In the darkness beyond, the waves crashed toward her nearer and nearer. Like the rattle of the sea in the caves. Something swept over her, chilled her, burned her, leaped over her head, and engulfed her. When she emerged, she was breathless, gasping, as if she had been fighting against the waves.

IV

Major West was waiting for Nora outside the rectory gate.

‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, as she came up to him in her moss-green hat and dress, ‘you’re the color of the sea this morning.’ Then with a sigh, he added, ‘Poor old Reggie—old Reggie in Exeter,’ and both of them laughed together.

The larks were swooping up from the ground with flashes of song and soaring toward the clouds. Timid lambs peered out from behind the shelter of their mothers at the intruders in their pleasant green pasture. There were foot-bridges to cross over little streams, with forget-me-nots clustering around them, their tender, unforgettable blue eyes blinking up toward the sun. Around interrupting cliffs, following steep trails up and down, sometimes leaving the sea and coming back to it gladly again, Nora and Major West tramped toward Roswithiel. From time to time they flopped down upon a soft bank of flowers to rest. Flowers were everywhere. One stepped upon them, lay upon them in this profuse summer season. They lost the trail, floundered in streams and swampy ground, leaped over pools, found the trail again. The whole expedition was a gigantic game of hide-and-seek against a prankish Nature with her tests of endurance.

On a hillside high above the sea, they sat down to eat their luncheon. Sticking up over the trees behind them was the steeple of Roswithiel church.

‘It’s a silent little church. There aren’t any bells,’ Major West explained. ‘They were bringing them by ship from Plymouth, so the story goes, and there was a wreck in sight of the town. The natives say that on calm nights they can hear the bells ringing from the depths of the sea. Reggie can tell you all about it.’

‘It’s a pretty story,’ Nora commented, looking across the meadow where men were haying. From the fragrance of the new-mown hay and the peace of the church tower, one turned back to the sea. She peered down—down the scarred black cliffs—at the sea, rising and falling, high ridges, low ridges, then a great mountain of heaving, destructive ocean.

A middle-aged woman panted up toward their hilltop. She was staying in Roswithiel, she said, a very pretty place, but lonely.

‘I heard you laughing together,’ she added, apologizing for her intrusion, ‘and I felt I must come up. Just the sound of voices sometimes——My husband and I, when we were young like you, came to Cornwall for our holidays. But it was a mistake for me to come back here.’

They begged her to share their luncheon, but she refused. If they didn’t mind, she’d like to chat with them a bit before she went back to her lodgings. They had looked so happy sitting there together on the hillside that she had envied them. Every one ought to be happy. That was what life was for.

Beyond a twist in the trail, they dropped down into Roswithiel, with its whitewashed cottages lined up along the narrow stream trickling in from the sea, where the ducks paddled up and down, the granite quay and lighthouse mere toys beside the solid wall of rock behind the village. Hedges of valerian bent their fragrant rosy blossoms over the water. Children waded in the shallow pools. Old men sat idle in the sunshine. Scarcely a human sound. Nora and Major West, perched on a hillock commanding the diminutive settlement, looked down upon the quiet scene.

‘How sweet—how very sweet it all is,’ breathed Nora.

Neville West sat holding one knee between his hands, his eyes blinking in the brilliant sunshine.

At tea-time they found a retreat from the sun, which had grown steadily hotter, a cool, dim room, with walls tinted yellow, and yellow curtains and yellow poppies on the tables painted a cool green.

‘All your color scheme,’ laughed Major West, as they entered.

‘Tea—tea—oceans of tea,’ begged Nora, pouring a cup of tea for him out of a green-and-yellow teapot.

Beyond the window where they sat, an old mill-wheel turned and splashed up cool columns of water. Drip—drip. There was green moss on the silver-grey wood of the wheel, mossy depths in the water. As it turned, Nora felt the streams flowing gently over her, refreshing her, making her over. Perhaps she had been happy before. But never like this—knowing she was happy—sure that this exquisite, beautiful moment was all for her.

They finished their lettuce sandwiches, and began on scones, with honey and Cornish cream, and cup after cup of tea, steaming hot, smelling like pressed rose leaves.

A deep sigh from her companion. She looked up. There was a queer twist to his face, as if he were in pain.

‘What is it?’

‘I want to stay here forever,’ he said. ‘Here—just like this.’

‘And I—I too,’ she added.

The waitress had left them. They sat regarding each other, neither one remembering to look away. He was pulling at the petals of the yellow poppies between them. Those long brown fingers——She dropped her eyes.

‘Sitting here—you and I—I suddenly remembered—never before—the quiet. After so many years. In the army they were always packing me off somewhere. After Sandhurst it was China. Next Egypt.’ He held a poppy petal between his fingers, crushing it, letting it fall. ‘I was married the night before we started for Cairo. Three years of it. My children were born there. I remember the trials of getting milk for them. Goat’s milk it was. And they are great girls now. With their mother in Brighton. Molly, the oldest, going to dancing parties.’ He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘I’m glad they’re girls—she can manage them—see that——’

Nora poured out a cup of cold tea and drank it in great gulps, the sickening stuff nearly choking her. Of course, she ought to have known that he was married. A man with his charm, his handsome face. As the clergyman’s widow had said, all women——

‘Until the war I was a soldier who had never seen a battle. Just dress parade. Always in some show or other. My wife liked the excitement—the social responsibilities. She managed it all superbly. And then the war. I was twenty-eight, a spoiled boy who had danced at Embassy balls, army balls. At first I couldn’t take it all in. I went around in a funk, a daze. I—a professional soldier. I was no good. And then—we all got spinning around. Orders from on top. At last the front lines. A sporting chance—facing danger every moment—your men such sporting chaps. Every day we thought they’d get us. We didn’t care. Soon we wanted them to end it for us. It’s like a nightmare. You keep thinking you’ll wake up. The blood—quivering bodies—reeking—reeking—the shrieks—squeals. I never wake up in the morning without seeing and hearing it all over again—smelling—the horror of it.’

Nora swallowed a second nauseous gulp of tea. A few moments before, she had been happy.

‘Nothing touched me. Not a scratch. On leave, constant excitement. It’s the way of our family. They fancied it was what I needed. My wife and I—those few days—she with colonels, generals—I carrying on with young girls—bold, pretty things. I hated them back at the front.’

Nora’s tea-cup rattled against the saucer. She sat bent over the table, her face shaded by her hands.

‘Men beside me—dying like pigs in a slaughtering pen. But I—up to the end—I thought if I lived to see it over—I’d kill myself. Never another war then. But they sent me to Mesopotamia afterward. We were quartered in an old Turkish fort. Nothing to do. Just thinking. The men spent their time with field glasses ready for a glimpse at a Turkish woman. Any woman—when they saw her, they called to the others. All that—thinking—it came to me—I knew I hated the army—hated it. And when I remembered that young boys like me—brought up on family traditions of the obligation to serve one’s country, to preserve the Empire—killing—killing other men, I wanted to save them. All those days with nothing to do—the idea tortured me that there was no one—no one but me to tell them. Your serene years with time to give to books—I’ve envied you that. I read when I could. Adventure tales—then history. Thucydides over and over. But a soldier trying to write a book——’ He shook his head. ‘He’s like a plough boy with a pen. But I began to write for the cadets at Sandhurst. Four, six, eight hours a day. Sometimes nothing would come. The men lolling around me—their interminable stories—of women mostly. To escape I began writing again. Maybe I stuck at it too close. At last they sent me home—home for a rest. I wanted to finish my book. Only rest—complete rest they said. But how does one rest?’

Nora lifted herself out of her chair. They must go back. They had a long way to go. How could she drag herself over all those weary miles—up and down—hour after hour? She was so tired. Every bone cried out against the pull of that endless journey before they saw the tower of Reggie’s church. But now that they knew the trail, they plodded along more quickly than they had in the morning, though with all the elasticity, the keen sense of discovery gone.

In the meadows, which a few hours before had been so cool and moist, the hot sun beat down upon the little streams, which sent up steaming fumes. In the shadow of the rocks the ewes lay, indifferent to the poor lambs bleating and crying for the mothers they had lost. This way and that they scampered, seeking here, there, behind a bush, a rock, stupidly missing the place where their hot, bad-tempered mothers lay concealed.

Nora tried to help them. ‘Here, poor thing, here is your mother.’ But they plunged away from her in fear. Like people—so stupid—just missing what they most wanted. ‘They will never find their mothers,’ Nora cried out to the silent man beside her. But he didn’t seem to hear her, as he stamped along over the spongy earth. A deep flush had spread over his face. Then he was very pale.

He fell on the ground close to the scanty shade of some stunted evergreen trees.

‘Let’s rest a moment,’ he said in a queer, gasping voice.

She had a vivid memory of her mother during her last sickness. ‘You are ill!’ she exclaimed in terror. She got a cup out of the picnic bag and ran for some water from the stream they had passed. She spilled it over his face, his hands. Small beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. Bending down over him, she rubbed his hands. A faint color came back to his face, the sickly pallor retreated.

‘I—I’m sorry,’ he breathed, turning toward her. ‘I haven’t been well. I——’

‘We walked too far.’

‘No—I’m all right now. Quite all right, I assure you.’

Her tears splashed down upon his hands, which she was rubbing between hers.

‘I’m sorry—I—I couldn’t spare you—seeing—me. It’s my heart. I—I want to tell you. I can’t last long, they say. I came down to Reggie. He knows. A month—six months——’

She covered her face with her hands.

‘Oh, please,’ he begged. ‘It doesn’t matter, really. It’s been so delightful to-day. If—a minute ago——’

‘I—I care,’ she wept, shaken with sobs.

‘Until a few days ago—living or dying—it didn’t matter,’ he confessed. ‘But now I—I want to live. Now when it’s too late. Living—it can be sweet, enduring. I’ve found out. I want it——Darling, I——’

From his broken words she pieced together what he meant, what both of them meant, as they clung to each other in the shade of the scrubby pines around which the lost lambs still straggled with their heart-breaking cries.

But it was no use. They must go back, he to Reggie, she to Adeline Pinks and the rest of Mrs. Pentillie’s guests waiting in their best clothes in the summer-house for the tinkle of the dinner bell. The tide was coming up, the sun dipping lower and lower. They rose, and, after one last embrace, went on slowly, heavily down the trail.

V

Nora had one day more in Cornwall. A lady from Manchester was coming to take her room as soon as she was gone. Nora and Neville met after dinner on the black cliff glowering down upon Doscastle Strand.

‘Nora, can’t we, your last day, go back to Roswithiel?’

‘If you wish,’ she agreed feebly. In the depths of her present misery what they did no longer mattered.

On the second expedition, the sun shone with the same beautiful yellow gleam as the first time, but sun, blue sea, floating gulls, the flowers under their feet—none of it existed for them. Nothing was real but their wretchedness, their parting in the morning. As they ate their luncheon in the cool tea-room, the water dripped off the mossy mill-wheel, the little waitress hovered over them with the same flattering attentions as before, but the food they tried to eat was tasteless.

As they followed the single street of the village joining a highway farther on, Neville said, ‘I meant to spare you, Nora. Never to let you know. That night on the cliff—when we might——’

‘Didn’t you know that day on the train——’

‘Of course. I forgot. When I entered the carriage and saw you sitting there——’

‘You were hidden behind your newspaper. You couldn’t see me. You didn’t even look at me then.’

‘I was hiding a blushing, schoolboy face, my darling.’

They had moments like this, when they were almost gay with each other, like happy lovers, alternating tenderness and playful scorn.

‘What’s this?’ Nora pointed to a break in the rows of evergreen, a path sun-flaked and fragrant. ‘Shall we see where it goes?’

At the end of the road, they discovered what appeared to be a gentleman’s estate, surrounded by a wall of the tumbling slate of Cornwall hedges, covered with stone-crop, with foxgloves growing in the crevices. A little farther they got a glimpse of a grey stone house, yellow with lichen, its sharply pointed gables giving it a venerable aspect, as it stood on a hill overlooking the sea. The gate stood open. On it was a sign: ‘Gentleman’s Residence To Let. Caretaker Within.’

‘Could we go in, Neville? At home I love to prowl around empty houses.’

They walked boldly up the driveway, with its little green islands of weeds, its straggling edges. To the south of the house was an unkempt, luxurious garden, giant geraniums, fuchsias in festoons tumbling over the garden wall, great heights of myrtle. Snapdragons and white pinks had sprung up, seeding themselves, in the neglected borders.

A woman in a brown dress appeared from around the corner of the house. She had a pale face spotted with brown, the color of her dress, large, hollow brown eyes, a nervous twitch to her lips.

‘Would you care to see the house?’ she asked them in a bleak, disheartened voice. ‘I’ll be glad to show it to you.’

Nora turned to her companion. ‘Could we, Neville? I’d like to see it.’

‘If you wish.’

The caretaker tried to smile encouragingly. ‘It’s a pleasant old place. We thought it was let for the season. They paid money down. And then the last moment the lady decided not to come.’ She ushered them into the house. ‘My husband an’ me—we do all the work here. You see how dry an’ sunny it is inside, madam. Not like some o’ these old stone houses.’

In the drawing-room, through the windows opening out upon the wall of fuchsias and myrtle, the sunshine poured in, and lay in golden squares upon the dark floors and brown walls, flickered upon the chairs and sofas in their crash covers.

‘I could take ’em off in a minute, madam, if you’d care to see. The cretonne’s all been washed for the summer. See—just this one. My lady—she planned the pink in ’em to match the fuchsias outside. Kind of a rose really—the color. She loved this room. But one lone lady in this house—an’ since the war you know how it’s gone with those that’s had plenty before. An’ her in cheap lodgings in Westgate—it’s sad to think about.’

They followed her upstairs, where she displayed one room after the other. She did her job thoroughly, as well as she could.

‘Folks hasn’t the money,’ she concluded when they had seen the last room. ‘That’s why a house like this stands vacant. Last year we had an American family. Money was nothin’ to ’em. But I didn’t care much for ’em. My lady kept one room for herself. No place is home to her like this. An’ they—they treated her like a servant. I couldn’t stand it. She didn’t seem to notice—just worked with the flowers an’ sat there in the sun near the garden wall.’

They went downstairs, stood in the hall a moment, the caretaker talking on and on, so they couldn’t go.

‘If I could rent it—even a month—a week or two—now it’s so late in the season,’ she urged, following them out of the front door.

Neville bowed. ‘Could we have a little time to consider—talk it over together?’

She smiled, retreated, as they stood out near the fuchsias in the sunshine.

‘Nora, could you—you and I for a few days together? Coming this way—the old place—it’s like a kind of childhood dream. As if we’d been here before. Darling—if you could——’

She swayed toward him. To make a decision such as this, in a chance moment, standing there, the eye of the worried caretaker upon her——

‘I’d arrange everything, dearest, everything. You know what we’ve said—that if we could have only a short space of time together—not cheated out of everything——You, dearest, that night in the churchyard waiting for Reggie——’

‘Yes, I—I know,’ she gasped, clutching his hand.

‘I mustn’t—I ought not—appeal to you that way. My being—not well. But if it ended to-morrow—and you and I—even a few hours——’

‘I—I’m afraid,’ she shuddered.

‘If I felt that I’d lived—ever——You told me that you—nothing you really wanted—until you and I——’

‘Yes,’ she agreed sadly.

‘I must—I must snatch at it before it’s too late. Happiness for us both.’

She locked her hands tightly together.

‘A real home with you—how I’ve longed for it, my darling.’

Of course she would do anything to make him happy. He knew she would.

Hand in hand, they went back to the caretaker. Yes, they would take the house for two weeks. It fitted in well with their plans. They could come in the morning.

VI

Mrs. Pentillie’s dinner was over when Nora returned, but they sent a tray upstairs to her room. She was very tired, she explained, and had some packing to finish. In the morning they crowded around the jingle when Mr. Pentillie was ready to take her to the station. Adeline Pinks and her aunt both kissed Nora, Mrs. Pentillie hoped she would come again. The Quaker husband and wife invited her to visit them in Sheffield before she went back to America. She took the London train, got off at the next station, and there Neville waited for her according to their plan.

‘No, no, I’m not sorry,’ she assured him when he took her in his arms.

‘My darling,’ he whispered over and over again, ‘my generous darling girl.’

Mrs. Tamar, who regarded all residents in her mistress’s house as interlopers to be endured only for the sake of profit, took good care of them. It was her duty. But she had no interest in these strangers, or any others. Nice enough people. No trouble. Tearing around the cliffs on bright days and not in the house much. This, Neville declared, was Mrs. Tamar’s estimate of Nora and him. She served them at meals in her brown dresses, which were always of the same cut and color, a part of her, like an outer skin, hide, or plumage, over which she wore white aprons several sizes too large. Neville carved the joints, Nora poured the coffee in the oak-panelled dining-room with the rough stone floor, the candles on the table making long shadows over the two of them and Mrs. Tamar, as she came in and out. A bent little man, Mr. Tamar, with whom they seldom spoke, worked, when his wife’s eye was upon him, in the vegetable garden back of the house.

Every morning, when they went through the garden and over the stile in the stone hedge toward the sea, the only person they ever met was a lame old man, Mr. Bunny, from the farmhouse he pointed at between them and Roswithiel. With his dog, he was going after his sheep, which fed in the grassy crevices of the rocks close to the sea.

‘You want to watch him bring up the sheep?’ he asked Nora one morning as he limped past her. He always addressed her instead of Neville. ‘They’re a stubborn flock, them sheep, but he gets ’em.’

The dog was barking and circling round his master. ‘Go for ’em, Roy,’ he commanded at last.

He hobbled down the steep trail, Nora after him. Neville would wait at the top. It was, Nora agreed, a splendid sight to see the dog assemble the sheep and bring them in a sober procession away from their favorite feeding-grounds.

‘I told you he’d do it,’ chuckled Mr. Bunny. Then he examined Nora with his funny little eyes. ‘American lady, be ye? We have ’em hereabouts. I read an American book once, when I was a lad. About a fugitive slave. Ran away from his master. Through swamps and rivers. I knowed that book most by heart. Every winter—sittin’ tight up t’ the fire, I’d read it over ag’in.’

In Nora he saw reflected the glory of this remarkable volume of his youth. He repeated over and over again, as they climbed the cliff, the one story he had read.

Neville sat in the bright morning sunshine waiting for Nora. He turned his eyes, with their indolent, half-cynical tilt upon her, and responded to her smile with the expression, at once bantering and tender, which so instantly transformed him.

‘I missed you so—my darling.’ She sat down close to him, pressing his hand. ‘Those few minutes. I was like a forlorn little boy—like one of those lambs you felt so sorry for that day—lost from its mother.’

A week passed. Sun, rain, it made no difference to them. Sometimes Mrs. Tamar’s eyes upon them had a less bleak look. They were happy people. Even Mrs. Tamar must know that.

The larks had never sung with more emancipated delight in their song than during those flying, flying days. Nora and Neville were like larks. Swooping up and up—never out of breath, those marvellous birds, always singing, always seeking the sun.

The two of them sitting quietly on a rock high above the sea told each other that their bodies had dropped away, that everything had dropped away, the past, the future. Memory was gone. But for the present they had a kind of transfigured experience, sharpened senses, a keenness of sight, hearing, smell, which had never been theirs before. And never were they tired—in the morning, or at night. This was living what only a few knew—the marks of it on their faces. People passing them on the street saw that here were human beings who were different. Not poor creatures breathing, filling their lungs with air, letting it out again, respiration, heartbeats, food, digestion, pains. Not that alone. But full crowded vital existence for them. Making beauty of it, reality. Mrs. Tamar—surely even Mrs. Tamar could see that they were happy.

In the night Nora sometimes awoke from troubled dreams with a muffled cry of fear. Or at dawn when the first light stole into the room, she had a moment of terror when she looked at the motionless figure lying beside her so still. But he was sleeping peacefully, and she, too, slept again. If he had any such moments, she never knew. Their two weeks were almost over. They might stay three, four, on and on through the summer. One day and then another—that was all.

One blustering morning they had climbed down to a shelter in the rocks, where they could look out for miles over the sea and at the same time be protected from the wind. They could see Mr. Bunny hobbling down after his sheep, leaping with the help of his stick from one rock to another like a goat.

‘Wonderful old chap—that Bunny of yours, Nora,’ said Neville lazily as he puffed at his pipe.

The peace of their snug little chamber was so perfect that they were reluctant to leave it at lunch-time.

‘But we’ll come back and spend the afternoon,’ Nora said, looking down at Mr. Bunny not far below them.

At the top Neville paused. The same deep flush and then the pallor.

‘Just a minute—if I lie here——’

Mr. Bunny was not far away. She called to him, her voice carried forward by the wind. He saw her, waved, began to turn his direction toward her.

‘Nora—I—my dearest.’ His eyes closed. ‘Reggie—to him——My dear—dear——’ She clung to his chilly hand, held his head against her breast.

A voice behind her. Mr. Bunny was saying something. ‘He’s gone—gone,’ he whispered close to her ear.

They were a long way beyond the house, close to the Roswithiel Road, which went on to Trebavas. She remembered Mr. Bunny’s horse and wagon making journeys between the two villages.

‘Take him to—to his friend—the rector in Trebavas,’ she gasped out. ‘Quick! Quick!’

Mr. Bunny placed a horny finger on Neville’s white cheek, felt at his heart. He shook his head. ‘He’s dead. While I was standin’ here behind ye.’

But Mr. Bunny understood that he was to go after his horse and wagon, fortunately all ready to start to Trebavas after dinner. In his stupid, bewildered way he followed her directions as best he could.

All the way to Trebavas she sat on the floor of the jolting wagon holding Neville in her arms. But she knew as well as Mr. Bunny that nothing could be done. They halted outside the rectory gate. The lazy horse waited with drooping head until his master came back with the clergyman.

Reggie looked at Nora, then at the burden in her arms. He and Mr. Bunny carried the limp figure into the house, climbed the stairs, and laid him on the bed, Nora following them. Then the old man, muttering to himself, clumped awkwardly down the stairs.

Reggie knelt beside his friend. Then he rose and held out his hand to Nora. They had not spoken a word.

‘Let me—let me get you some tea,’ he said. ‘You must be very tired.’

He led her out of the room. In a few confused words she tried to tell him what had happened. While she talked, his tortured eyes never left her face.

‘I—I must get away before you send—for—for his wife. She mustn’t know. He was with you—with you all the time. When he—you found him——’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I understand.’

‘Help me—help me to get away.’

She must allow him to drive her to the station as soon as the doctor went away. Then he could send a wire to Neville’s wife from Pelreath. He waited below while she went upstairs. When she returned, he was standing in the centre of the room where she had left him.

At the station, they had a few minutes to wait. He took her hand, holding it as if he had forgotten to release it.

‘You will—you will write me when you are safe in London. I shall not rest until I hear.’ There was something in his eyes which made her heart beat with fresh pain. ‘You will. Promise me. And afterward—in America——If I could know you were all right—quite all right.’

She nodded her head, unable to speak. The train was coming. Reggie still clung to her hand. ‘If ever—anything—anything I can do. For Neville and me both—a kindness.’

The evening glow swept Reggie’s face as she, from the train, watched him standing on the wind-swept platform, surrounded by the desolate Cornish moors. She closed her eyes and locked her lips tight together.

VII

In the American Express Office in London Nora found a long-delayed cable and a letter from the President of Petersfield. She stood in the room crowded with her countrymen and read the cable. It meant nothing. They wanted her—for what? She read the letter. They had created a new office at Petersfield, that of dean, an academic as well as a social dean, the President was careful to explain, whose function it would be to assist him in building up a new kind of Petersfield. She was the unanimous choice of the faculty, the alumnæ, the trustees. The new Petersfield, she, Nora Deming, could help to make a force in American education.

Nora tottered toward a divan against the wall. She read the letter once more. Then she began to laugh. She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. She mopped them away, but again they splashed upon her face, her hands, the letter which she held in her trembling fingers. The Americans all around her paid no attention to the small red-haired woman laughing there on the sofa. They were busy reading their letters. So she went on and on, all by herself, with shaking, hysterical laughter.