whole fifteen years; and it was as though instead of separation there had
been constant communion with her throughout that period. The tones of
her voice had stirred his heart in a nook which had lain stagnant ever
since he last heard them. They recalled the woman to whom he had once
lifted his eyes as to a goddess. Her announcement that she had been
another's came as a little shock to him, and he did not now lift his eyes
to her in precisely the same way as he had lifted them at first. But he
forgave her for marrying Bellston; what could he expect after fifteen
years?

He slept at Roy-Town that night, and in the morning there was a short
note from her, repeating more emphatically her statement of the previous
evening--that she wished to inform him clearly of her circumstances, and
to calmly consider with him the position in which she was placed. Would
he call upon her on Sunday afternoon, when she was sure to be alone?

'Nic,' she wrote on, 'what a cosmopolite you are! I expected to find my
old yeoman still; but I was quite awed in the presence of such a citizen
of the world. Did I seem rusty and unpractised? Ah--you seemed so once
to me!'

Tender playful words; the old Christine was in them. She said Sunday
afternoon, and it was now only Saturday morning. He wished she had said
to-day; that short revival of her image had vitalized to sudden heat
feelings that had almost been stilled. Whatever she might have to
explain as to her position--and it was awkwardly narrowed, no doubt--he
could not give her up. Miss Everard or Mrs. Bellston, what mattered
it?--she was the same Christine.

He did not go outside the inn all Saturday. He had no wish to see or do
anything but to await the coming interview. So he smoked, and read the
local newspaper of the previous week, and stowed himself in the chimney-
corner. In the evening he felt that he could remain indoors no longer,
and the moon being near the full, he started from the inn on foot in the
same direction as that of yesterday, with the view of contemplating the
old village and its precincts, and hovering round her house under the
cloak of night.

With a stout stick in his hand he climbed over the five miles of upland
in a comparatively short space of time. Nicholas had seen many strange
lands and trodden many strange ways since he last walked that path, but
as he trudged he seemed wonderfully like his old self, and had not the
slightest difficulty in fin