! It's not you and I that have got muddled--only
things, circumstances. If you had been a little more chummy with me.
There's a time for silence, but also a time for talking."

"Dear, there are things one _can't_ talk about, because one doesn't
know what to say, even to oneself."

"I know! I know it!" replied Helen, with emphasis.

And she came still nearer, with hand held out.

"All nerves, Irene! Neuralgia of--of the common sense, my dear!"

They parted with a laugh and a quick clasp of hands.

CHAPTER XXXVII

For half an hour Irene sat idle. She was waiting, and could do nothing
but wait. Then the uncertainty as to how long this suspense might hold
her grew insufferable; she was afraid too, of seeing Helen again, and
having to talk, when talk would be misery. A thought grew out of her
unrest--a thought clear-shining amid the tumult of turbid emotions. She
would go forth to meet him. He should see that she came with that
purpose--that she put away all trivialities of prescription and of
pride. If he were worthy, only the more would he esteem her. If she
deluded herself--it lay in the course of Fate.

His way up from Redmire was by the road along which she had driven on
the evening of her arrival, the road that dipped into a wooded glen,
where a stream tumbled amid rocks and boulders, over smooth-worn slabs
and shining pebbles, from the moor down to the river of the dale. He
might not come this way. She hoped--she trusted Destiny.

She stood by the crossing of the beck. The flood of yesterday had
fallen; the water was again shallow at this spot, but nearly all the
stepping-stones had been swept away. For help at such times, a crazy
little wooden bridge spanned the current a few yards above. Irene
brushed through the long grass and the bracken, mounted on to the
bridge, and, leaning over the old bough which formed a rail, let the
voice of the beck soothe her impatience.

Here one might linger for hours, in perfect solitude; very rarely in
the day was this happy stillness broken by a footfall, a voice, or the
rumbling of a peasant's cart. A bird twittered, a breeze whispered in
the branches; ever and ever the water kept its hushing note.

But now someone was coming. Not with audible footstep; not down the
road at which Irene frequently glanced; the intruder approached from
the lower part of the glen, along the beckside, now walking in soft
herbage, now striding from stone to stone, sometimes lifting the