younger many who were older than herself, a grievance with which he had once charged her. But she had not understood. The knitting of her brows as she puzzled over it made him laugh at last. He told her emotion would have to teach her his meaning, and the question, who would rouse that emotion, had since disquieted himself.

Borlase had been to the Mires to see old Hartas Kendrew. It was a name which clouded Anna's face for a moment, and made him avoid glancing at her as he uttered it. But the next moment she turned to him with the brightest of smiles.

'Did you ever hear of the burying he and his wife once went to?' she said. 'It was when buryings were buryings and finished off with rum. It had poured with rain all day and the waters were out. Jinny and Hartas had to cross a beck. They rode pillion and they were both drowsy, and it was comfortable to know the horse would find its own way home. They forgot the beck would be out, and could not hear its roar for the wind. Suddenly Jinny woke, feeling very cold, and saying "Not a drap more, thank you kindly, not a drap more." They were in the water, and it was the flood at their lips, not another glass of rum.'

'Good Heavens, what a shave! Did they get out?' said Borlase.

'Oh no! both were washed away and drowned.'

'But Hartas——?'

'Yes. He lived to tell the tale.'

'Then his wife was drowned? Well, he did cleverly to scramble out.'

'No.'

Borlase suddenly awoke to find himself puzzled. He looked suspiciously at Anna, walking unconcernedly beside him with her head averted.

'Then why did you say they were?' he asked.

'Why did you ask, when you had seen one of them in the flesh an hour ago?' said Anna, laughing.

Borlase was silent. The indictment was too obvious; another point for the dissection of his inner consciousness.

'One's imagination always flies to a catastrophe rather than good fortune,' said Anna.

'Not always,' said Borlase sharply. 'I never imagined on the moor to-night that Mr. Severn would be away after market at Wonston and I could not spend the evening with you.'

'But why not?' said Anna. 'I asked you and I told you of my new song. I thought as you declined you were in a hurry home.'

'If I had been in a hurry home I should have been there now.'

It was Anna's turn to be silent. Her resources suddenly seemed exhausted, the argument attenuated.

They had reached the gate. Borlase fumbled with the hasp, trying to secure a few moments for thought. He had known Anna many years and for the greater part of that time he had loved her. But he had resolved not to ask her to be his wife until he was his own master. At present he was still in partnership with the leading medical man in Wonston but in another year the partnership would expire and he would be independent and able to offer her such a home as he could think worthy of her. When he came to Old Lafer to-night he had not meant to precipitate matters but now he felt urged not to miss this opportunity, wholly unexpected and tempting as it was. He glanced at her with the resentment of desperation. She was looking across the road into the ferny depths of an oak planting where twilight gave the vistas a dreamy quietude. How could she be so calm when he was so overwrought? Would she never perceive his feeling? What a help a touch of shyness in her manner would be! He dreaded lest speech should forfeit her friendliness and gain nothing in its place, but still more lest his own inaction now should paralyse his resolution and unman him.

'She shall refuse me; perhaps a second time she would accept me,' he thought. 'Rather than that I should wrong her and myself any longer by not facing the truth, I'll be manly and ask her outright; at any rate it'll make her think of me.'

He opened the gate and she advanced with a smile to shake hands. He turned abruptly. There was a look on his face which she had never seen before. She stood transfixed, involuntarily gazing at him, scarcely conscious that his searching look was wholly concentrated on her and expressed an earnestness that the next moment struck her as overwhelmingly pathetic in a man. In that moment the tension of her figure relaxed, vivid colour rushed over her face, her eyes fell, veiling undreamt-of tears. It was her first self-consciousness and it stirred her unutterably, thrilled to the depths of her heart. She felt rather than heard that he was coming near to her. She had clutched the gate with one hand, for so sudden was the rush of this new tide of feeling that it dizzied her, the world swam before her. His voice, with a new tone in it whose vibration seemed to strike music into life—the music of love, of marriage, of lifelong companionship, reached her as in a dream. He was speaking, still with that look of ardent devotion fixed upon her. This was no dream. She heard, she saw.

But that was all to-night.

Mrs. Severn's voice broke into the midst of his eager speech. Both heard it and turned, startled.

'Anna, Anna!' she called.

She was standing at her open window, beckoning. Anna was alarmed, but Borlase was suspicious.

'Don't go,' he said, seizing her hand.

'I must. She wants me.'

'Oh Anna, so do I. But 'twill be a new habit for you to want me. Well, I'll wait.'

'Until I go and come?'

'Just so,' he said and laughed joyously.

But she was already blushing at her own words, and his laugh, setting free as it seemed to do his own wild emotion and her surrender, made her shrink into herself.

'Oh! not to-night. How could I come back to-night? It's getting late, it's——' she said incoherently, and wrung her hand out of his.

Not before he had bent close to her.

'But I shall wait. I have and I will in every way,' he said in a whisper. She gave him one glance, hurried, misty; a smile set in tears; passed him and was gone.

He leant against the gate, watching and waiting, scanning the house. Mrs. Severn had disappeared. No one was visible. It grew dusk. A bat flitted round him. The murmur of the beck on the sweet still air was every moment clearer as it sang its 'quiet tune' to the 'sleeping woods.' Surely she would come.

But she did not, and presently he mounted his horse and rode away.