LITMIR.BIZ

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they were so essentially different, even in their likeness, that the souls in their two bodies could never easily comprehend one another nor arrive at any point of real instinctive understanding.

      Something of the same thought must have troubled Linda too at that moment, for as they fixed their eyes on each other’s faces there fell between them that sort of devastating silence which indicates the struggle of two human spirits, seeking in vain to break the eternal barrier in whose isolating power lies all the tragedy and all the interest of life.

      Suddenly Nance moved to the window and threw it wide open.

      “Listen!” she said.

      The younger sister made a quick apprehensive movement and clasped her hands tightly together. Her eyes grew wide and her breast rose and fell.

      “Listen!” Nance repeated.

      A low, deep-drawn murmur, reiterated, and again reiterated, in menacing monotony, filled the room.

      “The sea!” cried both sisters together.

      Nance shivered, closed the window and sank down on a chair. With lowered eyes she remained for some seconds absorbed and abstracted. When she lifted her head she saw that her sister was watching her and that there was a look on her face such as she had never seen there before. It was a look she was destined to be unable to thrust from her memory, but no effort of hers could have described it then or afterwards. Making an effort of will which required all the strength of her soul, Nance rose to her feet and spoke solemnly and deliberately.

      “Swear to me, Linda, that nothing I could have said or done would have made you agree to stay in London. I told you I was ready to stay, didn’t I, that night I came back with Adrian and found you awake? I begged and begged you to tell me the truth, to tell me whether Rachel was forcing you into going. I offered to leave her for good and all—didn’t I?—if she was unkind to you. It’s only the truth I want—only the truth! We’ll go back—now—to-morrow—the moment you say you wish it. But if you don’t wish it, make me know you don’t! Make me know it—here—in my heart!”

      In her emotion, pressing her hand to her side, she swayed with a pathetic, unconscious movement. Linda continued to watch her, the same indescribable look upon her face.

      “Will you swear that nothing I could have done would have made you stay? Will you swear that, Linda?”

      The younger girl in answer to this appeal, leapt from her bed and rushing up to her sister hugged her tightly in her arms.

      “You darling thing!” she cried, “of course I’ll swear it. Nothing—nothing—nothing! would have made me stay. Oh, you’ll soon see how happy I can be in Rodmoor—in dear lovely Rodmoor!”

      A simultaneous outburst of weeping relieved at that moment the feelings of both of them, and they kissed one another passionately through their falling tears.

      In the hush that followed—whether by reason of a change in the wind or simply because their senses had grown more receptive—they both clearly heard through the window that remained closed, the husky, long-drawn beat, reiterative, incessant, menacing, of the waves of the North Sea.

      During breakfast and the hours which succeeded that meal, Nance was at once surprised and delighted by the excellent spirits of both Miss Doorm and Linda. They even left her to herself before half the morning was over and went off together, apparently in complete harmony along the banks of the tidal stream.

      She herself, loitering in the deserted garden, felt a curious sensation of loneliness and a wonder, not amounting to a sense of discomfort but still remotely disturbing, as to why it was that Adrian had not, as he had promised, appeared to take her out. Acting at last on a sudden impulse, she ran into the house, put on her hat and cloak, and started rapidly down the road leading to the village.

      The Spring was certainly not so far advanced in Rodmoor as it was in London. Nance felt as though some alien influence were at work here, reducing to enforced sterility the natural movements of living and growing things. The trees were stunted, the marigolds in the wet ditches pallid and tarnished. The leaves of the poplars, as they shook in the gusty wind, seemed to her like hundreds and hundreds of tiny dead hands—the hands of ghostly babies beseeching whatever power called them forth to give them more life or to return them to the shadows.

      Yes, some alien influence was at work, and the Spring was ravished and tarnished even while yet in bud. It was as if by an eternal mandate, registered when this portion of the coast first assumed its form, the seasons had been somehow thwarted and perverted in the processes of their natural order, and the land left, a neutral, sterile, derelict thing, neither quite living nor quite dead, doomed to changeless monotony.

      Nance was still some little distance from the village, but she slackened her pace and lingered now, in the hope that at any moment she might see Adrian approaching. She knew from Rachel’s description only very vaguely where Mr. Stork’s cottage was and she was afraid of missing her lover if she went too far.

      The road she was following was divided from the river by some level water meadows and she did not feel certain whether the village itself lay on the right or the left of the river mouth. Miss Doorm had spoken of a bridge, but among the roofs and trees which she made out in front of her, she was unable at present to see anything of this.

      What she did see was a vast expanse of interminable fen-land stretching away for miles and miles on every side of her, broken against the sky line, towards which she was advancing, by grey houses and grey poplars but otherwise losing itself in misty horizons which seemed infinite in their remoteness. On both sides of the little massed group of roofs and trees and what the girl made out as the masts of boats in the harbour, a long low bank of irregular sand-dunes kept the sea from her view, though the sound of the waves—and Nance fancied it came to her in a more friendly manner now she was closer to it—was insistent and clear.

      Across the fens to her left she discerned what was evidently the village church but the building looked so desolate and isolated—alone there in the midst of the marshes—that she found it difficult to conceive the easily-daunted Linda as practising organ music in such a place. She wondered if the grey building she could just obscurely distinguish, leaning against the wall of the church, were the abode of Mr. Traherne. If so, she thought, he must indeed be a man of God to endure that solitude.

      She had wandered into the wet grass by the road’s edge and was amusing herself by picking a bunch of dandelions, the only flower at that moment in sight, when she saw a man’s figure approaching her from the Rodmoor direction. At first she assumed it was Adrian, and made several quick steps to meet him, but when she recognised her mistake the disappointment made her so irritable that she threw her flowers away. Her irritation vanished, however, after a long survey of him, when the stranger actually drew near.

      He was a middle-sized man wearing at the back of his head a dark soft hat and buttoned up, from throat to ankles, in a light-coloured heavy overcoat. His face, plump, smooth, and delicately oval, possessed a winning freshness of tint and outline which was further enhanced by the challenging friendliness of his whimsical smile and the softness of his hazel eyes. What could be seen of his mouth—for he wore a heavy moustache—was sensitive and sensuous, but something about the way he walked—a kind of humorous roll, Nance mentally defined it, of his sturdy figure—gave an impression that this body, so carefully over-coated against the cold, was one whose heart was large, mellow and warm. It was not till after a minute or two, not in fact till he had wavered and hovered at her side like an entomologist over a newly discovered butterfly, that the girl got upon the track of other interesting peculiarities.

      His nose, she found, for instance, was the most striking feature of his face, being extremely long and pointed like the nose of a rodent, and with large quivering nostrils slightly reddened, it happened just then, by the impact of the wind, and tilted forward as the man veered about as though to snuff up the very perfume and essence of the fortunate occasion.

      From the extreme tip of this interesting feature hung a pearly drop of rheum.

      What—next

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