o you feel about colour, Meriel? Does it speak to you? Look at
those great waves today! ... The blue of them, the deepest, truest blue
that it is possible to conceive, and the shafts of green, cutting across
the blue, and the purple shadows, and above all, the foamy torrent of
white! Things that one has done oneself are so poor, so unsatisfying;
but the big things last. The sea comforts me, Meriel; the bigness of
it, the beauty of it. Why should we fret, and be troubled? It will
pass! Everything passes. We have only to be faithful; to stick to our
posts, and look ahead!"

But Meriel was a woman, with a woman's heart that refused to find
comfort in philosophy. She looked at the changeful sea, but the very
beauty of it brought a heavier weight, for she was one of the tender
souls who are dependent on companionship for her joys. If Sterne had
loved her, and had been free to love, she would have entered into his
joy in Nature with ready understanding, but she was suffering from an
intolerable loneliness of spirit, to which the glory of the scene around
added the last touch of bitterness.

"It doesn't comfort me," she said. "I need something nearer; more
personal; something of my own. You have suffered, but you have also
enjoyed. It is easier to be resigned when you have possessed, even if
the possessions have had to go. If you haven't had _all_ that you asked
of life, at least you have had a great deal. Some of us have nothing!"

He looked at her as she gazed wistfully into space, a woman aged before
her time, with a sweet sad face, worn with the burden of his own
sorrows.

"What did you ask?" he inquired softly.

"I asked for Happiness," Meriel said, and turned her eyes on him with a
pitiful smile.

There was a long silence before he answered, but when he spoke his voice
was tremulous with feeling.

"Ah, Meriel!" he cried; "and we have given you Duty! ... It's a cold
thing to fill a woman's heart... I've reproached myself a thousand
times.--I should not have allowed you to sacrifice yourself.--It must
not go on!"

A spasm of fear ran through her veins.

"It's the nearest approach to happiness I've ever known."

"Nevertheless," he said firmly, "it shall not go on. We have no right
to murder your joy. Help me through the next few months, and then,
whatever happens, we start afresh!"

"But if I want to stay?"

He shook his head with a finality from which she knew there was no
appeal. What