real relief.

When the bungalow was finished I removed into it the picture 'Faith
and Love.' I also got in as much painting material as I might want
and began to make sketches in the neighbourhood.

Time went on, and there I remained. In a great degree, however, the
habit of grieving was conquered by my application to work. My
moroseness of temper gradually left me.

Beautiful memories began to take the place of hideous ones--the
picture of the mattress and the squalor gave place to pictures of
Winifred on the sands of Raxton or on Snowdon. Yet so much of habit
is there in grief that even at this time I was subject to recurrent
waves of the old pain--waves which were sometimes as overmastering as
ever.

I did not neglect the cottage, which was now my property, but kept it
in exactly the same state as that in which it had been put by Sinfi
after Winnie had wandered back to Wales.

By isolating myself from all society, by surrounding myself with
mementos of Winifred, memory really did at last seem to be working a
miracle such as was worked for the widowed Ja'afar.

Yet not entirely had memory passed into an objective presence. I
seemed to feel Winnie near me; but that was all. I felt that more
necessary than anything else in perfecting the atmosphere of memory
in which I would live was the society of her in whom alone I had
found sympathy--Sinfi Lovell. Did I also remember the wild theories
of my father and Fenella Stanley about the crwth? To obtain the
company of Sinfi had now become very difficult--her attitude towards
me had so changed. When she allowed me to rejoin the Lovells at
Kingston Vale she did so under the compulsion of my distress. But my
leaving the Gypsies of my own accord left her free from this
compulsion. She felt that she had now at last bidden me farewell
for ever.

Still, opportunities of seeing her occasionally would, I knew,
present themselves, and I now determined to avail myself of these.
Panuel Lovell and some of the Boswells were not unfrequently in the
neighbourhood, and they were always accompanied by Sinfi and Videy.

II

On a certain occasion, when I learnt that the Lovells were in the
neighbourhood, I sought them out. Sinfi at first was extremely shy,
or distant, or proud, or scared, and it was not till after one or two
interviews that she relaxed. She still was overshadowed by some
mysterious feeling towards me that seemed at one moment anger, at
another dread. However, I s