things." She smiled at him and looked at the hands
on her knee. "It seems to me that that's what I do best."

He did not know what to say and, having made inarticulate noises in his
throat, he went quickly to the schoolroom.

"Go to Notya, some one, and make her angry. She's being miserable in the
drawing-room. Tell her you've broken something!"

"I won't," Miriam said. "I've had too much of that, and I'm going to
enjoy the unwonted peace. You go, Helen."

"Leave her alone," Rupert advised. "You won't cure Notya's unhappiness
so easily as that."

"When the summer comes--" Helen began, cheerfully deceiving herself, and
John interrupted.

"Summer is here already. It's June next week."

He was married in his own way on the first day of that month, and Miriam
uttered no more regrets. She was comparatively contented with the
present. Mildred Caniper seldom thwarted her, and she knew that every
day George Halkett rode or walked where he might see her, and her memory
of that splendid summer was to be one of sunlight blotted with the
shapes of man and horse moving across the moor. George was not always
successful in his search, for she knew that he would pall as a daily
dish, but on Sundays if Daniel would not be beguiled, and if it was not
worth while to tease Helen through Zebedee, she seldom failed to make
her light secret way to the larch-wood where he waited.

Her excitement, when she felt any, was only sexual because the danger
she sought and the power she wielded were of that kind, and she was
chiefly conscious of light-hearted enjoyment and the new experience of
an understanding with the moor. Secrecy quickened her perceptions and
she found that nature deliberately helped her, but whether for its own
purposes or hers she could not tell. The earth which had once been her
enemy now seemed to be her friend, and where she had seen monotony she
discovered delicate differences of hour and mood. If she needed shelter,
the hollows deepened themselves at her approach, shadows grew darker and
the moor lifted itself to hide her. She seemed to take a friend on all
her journeys, but she was not quite happy in its company. It was a
silent, scheming friend and she was not sure of it; there were times
when she suspected laughter at which she would grow defiant and then,
pretending that she went openly in search of pleasure, she sang and
whistled loudly on her way.

There was an evening when that sound was answered by the nois