by accident, dusk having closed in elsewhere. He concluded his
plaintive melody, a very simple performance, demanding no great
skill; and she waited, thinking another might be begun. But, tired
of playing, he had desultorily come round the fence, and was rambling
up behind her. Tess, her cheeks on fire, moved away furtively, as if
hardly moving at all.

Angel, however, saw her light summer gown, and he spoke; his low
tones reaching her, though he was some distance off.

"What makes you draw off in that way, Tess?" said he. "Are you
afraid?"

"Oh no, sir--not of outdoor things; especially just now when the
apple-blooth is falling, and everything is so green."

"But you have your indoor fears--eh?"

"Well--yes, sir."

"What of?"

"I couldn't quite say."

"The milk turning sour?"

"No."

"Life in general?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah--so have I, very often. This hobble of being alive is rather
serious, don't you think so?"

"It is--now you put it that way."

"All the same, I shouldn't have expected a young girl like you to see
it so just yet. How is it you do?"

She maintained a hesitating silence.

"Come, Tess, tell me in confidence."

She thought that he meant what were the aspects of things to her, and
replied shyly--

"The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they?--that is, seem as
if they had. And the river says,--'Why do ye trouble me with your
looks?' And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a
line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting
smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem
very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming! Beware of
me! Beware of me!' ... But YOU, sir, can raise up dreams with your
music, and drive all such horrid fancies away!"

He was surprised to find this young woman--who though but a milkmaid
had just that touch of rarity about her which might make her the
envied of her housemates--shaping such sad imaginings. She was
expressing in her own native phrases--assisted a little by her Sixth
Standard training--feelings which might almost have been called those
of the age--the ache of modernism. The perception arrested him less
when he reflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in
great part but the latest fashion in definition--a more accurate
expression, by words in _logy_ and _ism_, of sensations which men and
women have vaguely grasped for centuries.

Still, it was strange that