" she said.

He nodded his thanks for that. "Who told you about our trees? Daniel
again?"

"Yes; but I asked him."

He stood up. "I must go back. Thank you and good night."

It was getting dark and, with a heavy feeling in her heart, she watched
him walk away, while Miriam ran up with a whirl of skirts, crying out,
"Is he going? Is he going? Come and see him to the road."

Helen shook her head. She would let Miriam have anything she wanted, but
she would not share with her. She turned her back on the thin striding
figure and the small running one behind it, and she went into the house.
There, the remembrance of Mildred Caniper went with her from room to
room, and the house itself seemed to close on Helen and hold her in.

She stood at the schoolroom window and watched the twilight give place
to night. In the garden, the laurel bushes were quite black and it
seemed to her that the whole world was dead except herself and the
lurking shadows that filled the house. Zebedee, who tramped the long
road to the town, had become hardly more than a toy which had been wound
up and would go on for ever. Then, on the hillside, a spark leapt out,
and she knew that John or Lily Brent had lighted the kitchen lamp.

CHAPTER XII

Miriam took Zebedee to the road and, finding him uninteresting, she gave
him a scant good-night and left him. She sank into the heather and told
herself many times that she did not know what to do. She had wit enough
to realize that she was almost ridiculous in her discontent, but for
that Notya must be blamed, and her own immediate necessity was to find
amusement. In all the vastness of the moor, George Halkett was the only
being who could give her a taste of what she wanted, and she had
quarrelled with George Halkett. She sat and glowered at the white road
cutting the darkness of the moor and she thought it had the cruel look
of a sharp and powerful knife. It seemed to threaten her and, though she
had all youth's faith in her good fortune, at times she was taken by a
panic lest she should turn out to be one of those whom fate left
stranded. That fear was on her now, for there were such women, she knew,
and sometimes they were beautiful! Perhaps they were often beautiful,
and in the long run it might be better to be good, yet she would not
have exchanged her looks for all the virtues in the world.

"Nobody would!" she cried aloud, and, seizing two bunches of heather by
their stalks, she shook t