look and did not clothe the soil so completely. An impulse
had brought her hither, and her first sense on arriving had been one of
disappointment. Was the change in her way of seeing? or had the
retreat indeed suffered, perchance from the smoke of New Wanley? The
disappointment was like that we experience in revisiting a place kept
only in memory since childhood. Adela had not travelled much in the past
year, but her growth in experience had put great tracts between her and
the days when she came here to listen and wonder. It was indeed a memory
of her childhood that led her into the wood.

She had brought with her a German book on Socialism and a little German
dictionary. At the advice of Mr. Westlake, given some months ago on the
occasion of a visit to the Manor, she had applied herself diligently to
this study. But it was not only with a view to using the time that she
had selected these books this morning. In visiting a scene which would
strongly revive the past, instinct--rather than conscious purpose--had
bidden her keep firm hold upon the present. On experiencing her
disillusion a sense of trouble had almost led her to retrace her steps
at once, but she overcame this, and, seating herself on the
familiar bank, began to toil through hard sentences. Such moments of
self-discipline were of daily occurrence in her life; she kept watch and
ward over her feelings and found in efforts of the mind a short way out
of inner conflicts which she durst not suffer to pass beyond the first
stage.

Near at hand there grew a silver birch Hubert Eldon, on one of the
occasions when he talked here with Adela and Letty, had by chance let
his eyes wander from Adela to the birch tree, and his fancy, just then
active among tender images, suggested a likeness between that
graceful, gleaming stem with its delicately drooping foliage and
the sweet-featured girl who stood before him with her head bowed in
unconscious loveliness. As the silver birch among the trees of the wood,
so was Adela among the men and women of the world. And to one looking
upon her by chance such a comparison might still have occurred. But in
face she was no longer what she had then been. Her eyebrows, formerly so
smooth and smiling, now constantly drew themselves together as if at a
thought of pain or in some mental exertion. Her cheeks had none of their
maiden colour. Her lips were closed too firmly, and sometimes trembled
like those of old persons who have known m