hild playing on the beach, and had injured herself
irremediably. She lived with her maid in a small lodging, and being
often confined to her room for days, nearly every visitor was
welcome. Mike liked this pallid and forgotten little woman. He found
in her a strange sweetness--a wistfulness. There was poetry in her
loneliness and her ruined health. Strength, health, and beauty had
been crushed by a chance fall. But the accident had not affected the
mind, unless perhaps it had raised it into more intense sympathy with
life. And in all his various passions and neglected correspondence he
never forgot for long to answer her letters, nor did he allow a month
to pass without seeing her. And now he bought for her a great packet
of roses and a novel; and with some misgivings he chose Zola's _Page
d'Amour_.

"I think this is all right. She'll be delighted with it, if she'll
read it."

She would have read anything he gave, and seen no harm since it came
from him. The ailing caged bird cannot but delight in the thrilling
of the wild bird that comes to it with the freedom of the sky and
fields in its wings and song. She listened to all his stories, even
to his stories of pigeon-shooting. She knew not how to reproach him.
Her eyes fixed upon him, her gentle hand laid on the rail of her
chair, she listened while he told her of the friends he had made, and
his life in the country; its seascape and downlands, the furze where
he had shot the rabbits, the lane where he had jumped the gate. Her
pleasures had passed in thought--his in action; the world was for
him--this room for her.

There is the long chair in which she lies nearly always; there is the
cushion on which the tired head is leaned, a small beautifully-shaped
head, and the sharp features are distinct on the dark velvet, for the
lamp is on the mantelpiece, and the light falls full on the profile.
The curtains are drawn, and the eyes animate with gratitude when Mike
enters with his roses, and after asking kindly questions he takes a
vase, and filling it with water, places the flowers therein, and sets
it on the table beside her. There is her fire--(few indeed are the
days in summer when she is without it)--the singing kettle suggests
the homely tea, and the saucepan on the hearth the invalid. There is
her bookcase, set with poetry and religion, and in one corner are the
yellow-backed French novels that Mike has given her. They are the
touches the most conclusive of reality