heless it was with
an overwhelming impression of answering a question, that Rupert spoke
again, saying slowly:

"She is better, but she is not cured. The attacks of depression come on
less frequently, but they still come. We are tring to ward off another
at this moment. She grew tired of the East. For a time she delighted
in it, and the novelty took her out of herself; but it became
wearisome--the eternal glare, the absence of green, the medley of
tongues. She wanted to come home. We've been wandering about for the
last four months, and landed here last week. It's a charming spot, and
_peaceful_. It ought to do her good!"

There was an appeal in his voice which a woman's ear should have been
quick to read, but Lilith made no response. She turned her strange,
expressionless eyes first on the silent, shaded canal, then on the
river, sparkling in the sun, its waters beating against the jagged
rocks. Until that moment Rupert had regarded the two streams from an
artistic standpoint only, now of a sudden they seemed charged with a
spiritual meaning. Peace and storm, stagnation and action, life and
death,--he saw them all in the contrast between those two streams, and
for the first time a doubt crept into his mind whether he had done well
for Eve in shielding her from the great current of life, and lapping her
round with eternal calm. He turned abruptly to the girl and put another
question:

"Will you come with me now and see her? I think perhaps you might do
her good."

"Yes, I will come," Lilith answered, with a courteous indifference at
which Rupert smiled with grim amusement. For two long years he had
guarded his treasure with never-ceasing vigilance, finding for her the
most secluded retreats, where no alien eye should disturb her repose;
avoiding the society of his fellow-creatures as if it had been the
plague. And now at last he had invited an outsider to disturb that
calm, and she had received the honour with the indifference accorded to
the most ordinary of invitations! But, after all, what had he expected?
Who had ever yet seen Lilith moved out of her colossal calm!

Rupert led the way towards his temporary home, opened the gate, and
escorted Lilith through a brilliant tangle of garden to the front of the
house, where several long chairs were ranged along a shaded veranda. On
one of these lay Eve, in a reverie so deep that the new-comers had time
to take in the details of her appearance before