Bath, and how she had
told him, shuddering, that it would be dreadful to be drowned there, and
she had cried out in a nameless terror that she wished she had not seen
it for the first time with him by her side; and then Helen had come down
from the house and joined them, and they had all three gone away
together. She smiled a little to herself over that foolish, reasonless
terror. The quiet pool of water did not look dreadful to her now--only
cool, and still, and infinitely restful.

By-and-by other thoughts came into her mind. She recalled her interview
with old Lady Kynaston at Walpole Lodge, when she had so nearly promised
her to give back her hand to her eldest son, when she would have done so
had it not been for that sight of Maurice's face in the adjoining room.
She wondered what Lady Kynaston had thought of her sudden change of mind;
what she had been able to make of it; whether she had ever guessed at
what had been the truth. It seemed only yesterday that the old lady had
told her to be wise and brave, and to begin her life over again, and to
make the best of the good things of this world that were still left to
her.

"There is a pain that goes right through the heart," Maurice's mother had
said to her; "I who speak to you have felt it. I thought I should die of
it, but you see I did not."

Alas! did not Vera know that pain all too well; that heartache that
banishes peace by day and sleep by night, and that will not wear itself
out?

And yet other women had borne it, and had lived and been even happy in
other ways; but she could not be happy. Was it because her heart was
deeper, or because her sense of pain was greater than that of others?

Vera could not tell. She only wished, and longed, and even prayed that
she might have the strength to become Denis Wilde's wife; that she might
taste once more of peace, if not of joy; and yet all her longings and all
her prayers only made her realize the more how utterly the thing was
beyond her power.

To Maurice, and Maurice alone, belonged her life and her soul, and Vera
felt that it would be easier for her to be true to the sad, dim memory
of his love than to give her heart and her allegiance to any other upon
earth.

So she sat and mused, and pondered, and the amber light in the east faded
away into palest saffron, and the solemn shadows deepened and lengthened
upon the still bosom of the water.

Suddenly there came a sharp footstep and the rustle of a woman'