itter
restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. Not to write, not even to
say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened
against him. Her fear had blunted her imagination. Clearly now she saw,
and with an anguish in the vision, that Augustine must be suffering too.
Clearly she heard the love in his parting words. And she longed so to
see, to hear that love again, that the longing, as if with sudden
impatience of the hampering sense of sin, rushed into words that might
bring him.

She wrote:--"My dear Augustine. I miss you very much. Isn't this dismal
weather. I am feeling better. I need not tell you that I do forgive you
for the mistake that hurts us both." Then she paused, for her heart
cried out "Oh--come back soon"; but she did not dare yield to that cry.
She hardly knew that, with uncertain fingers, she only repeated
again:--"I miss you very much. Your affectionate mother."

This was on the fourth day.

On the afternoon of the fifth she stood, as she so often stood, looking
out at the drawing-room window. She was looking and listening, detached
from what she saw, yet absorbed, too, for, as with her son, this
watchfulness of natural things was habitual to her.

It was still raining, but more fitfully: a wind had risen and against a
scudding sky the sycamores tossed their foliage, dark or pale by turns
as the wind passed over them. A broad pool of water, dappling
incessantly with rain-drops, had formed along the farther edge of the
walk where it slanted to the lawn: it was this pool that Amabel was
watching and the bobbin-like dance of drops that looked like little
glass thimbles. The old leaden pipes, curiously moulded, that ran down
the house beside the windows, splashed and gurgled loudly. The noise of
the rushing, falling water shut out other sounds. Gazing at the dancing
thimbles she was unaware that someone had entered the room behind her.

Suddenly two hands were laid upon her shoulders.

The shock, going through her, was like a violent electric discharge. She
tingled from head to foot, and almost with terror. "Augustine!" she
gasped. But the shock was to change, yet grow, as if some alien force
had penetrated her and were disintegrating every atom of her blood.

"No, not Augustine," said her husband's voice: "But you can be glad to
see me, can't you, Amabel?"

He had taken off his hands now and she could turn to him, could see his
bright, smiling face looking at her, could f