nd of one only too prone to distrust her own happiness. It
could not last--how could it?

His nature and her own were so far apart! Even in that giving of herself
which had been such happiness, she had yet doubted; for there was so much
in him that was to her mysterious. All that he loved in poetry and
nature, had in it something craggy and culminating. The soft and fiery,
the subtle and harmonious, seemed to leave him cold. He had no particular
love for all those simple natural things, birds, bees, animals, trees,
and flowers, that seemed to her precious and divine.

Though it was not yet four o'clock she was already beginning to droop
like a flower that wants water. But she sat down to her piano,
resolutely, till tea came; playing on and on with a spirit only half
present, the other half of her wandering in the Town, seeking for
Miltoun. After tea she tried first to read, then to sew, and once more
came back to her piano. The clock struck six; and as if its last stroke
had broken the armour of her mind, she felt suddenly sick with anxiety.
Why was he so long? But she kept on playing, turning the pages without
taking in the notes, haunted by the idea that he might again have fallen
ill. Should she telegraph? What good, when she could not tell in the
least where he might be? And all the unreasoning terror of not knowing
where the loved one is, beset her so that her hands, in sheer numbness,
dropped from the keys. Unable to keep still, now, she wandered from
window to door, out into the little hall, and back hastily to the window.
Over her anxiety brooded a darkness, compounded of vague growing fears.
What if it were the end? What if he had chosen this as the most merciful
way of leaving her? But surely he would never be so cruel! Close on the
heels of this too painful thought came reaction; and she told herself
that she was a fool. He was at the House; something quite ordinary was
keeping him. It was absurd to be anxious! She would have to get used to
this now. To be a drag on him would be dreadful. Sooner than that she
would rather--yes--rather he never came back! And she took up her book,
determined to read quietly till he came. But the moment she sat down her
fears returned with redoubled force-the cold sickly horrible feeling of
uncertainty, of the knowledge that she could do nothing but wait till she
was relieved by something over which she had no control. And in the
superstition that to stay